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India's National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has extended access to the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) to non-resident Indians from 10 countries (Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and the United States). Indians living abroad comprise the world's largest overseas remittance-sending diaspora.  Other countries like Nepal, Bhutan, and Singapore, have already signed deals with NPCI to integrate their payment networks with UPI, enabling seamless cross-border payments. https://www.npci.org.in/PDF/npci/upi/circular/2023/UPI-OC-161-Extension-to-UPI-Circular-No-60-Crediting-Debiting-Non-Resident-accounts-in-UPI.pdf

Société Universitaire Européenne de Recherches Financières (SUERF) published a note that draws lessons from the success of India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI). It argues that this success majorly owes to ease of development of applications, easy use and zero-transaction fees for end-users. Further success factors have been strict data protection rules, active partnership with the private sector and adept regulation. The note also discusses the organization of the Indian payment market since the launch of UPI, and the changes in digital payment market in India, with a focus on payment volumes and values. It highlights the increasing investments in the payments market and increased adoption over time, and provides insights into the implications of payment systems for financial inclusion in India, and touches upon some challenges UPI faces.

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) also said that with the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) reaching 2 billion transactions a month and with potential for future growth, it has issued a cap of 30% of total volume of transactions processed in UPI, applicable on all Third Party App Providers (TPAPs). This will be with effect from January 1, 2021. It will help to address the risks and protect the UPI ecosystem as it further scales up. The existing TPAPs exceeding the specified cap, will have a period of two years from January 2021, to comply with the same in a phased manner.

The diagrams below show the detail. UPI = payment markup language + standard for interoperable payments. UPI has gone through explosive adoption since its inception in 2016. It builds a digital payments ecosystem with payment apps, banks, and NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India). It now takes up 60% of digital retail transactions in India.

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has given approval for WhatsApp to go live on using the Unified Payment Interface (UPI) multi-bank real-time payment system. However, WhatsApp can only expand its UPI user base in a graded manner starting with a maximum registered user base of twenty (20) million.

Unified Payment Interface (#UPI) is the fastest growing payment system in the world. National Payments Corporation Of India (NPCI) created a masterpiece - UPI, an interface via which you can transfer money between bank accounts across a single window. It's a system that powers multiple bank accounts into a single mobile app. This means you can send or receive money or scan a #QRcode to pay an individual, a merchant or a service provider to shop, pay bills or authorize payments.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is proposing to allow linking of credit cards on the United Payments Interface (UPI) platform beginning with RuPay credit cards. Rupay is India's homegrown card network, which is promoted by the National Payments Corporation of India, a body of the RBI that also oversees UPI payments. The is a system that powers multiple bank accounts into a single mobile application (of any participating bank), merging several banking features, seamless fund routing and merchant payments into one hood.

Banco Central de Reserva del Perú (BCRP), in collaboration withe the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), signed an agreement with India's National Payments Corporation to implement a retail payments platform in Peru, similar India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) platform. UPI is a real-time payment platform, available 24/7, that allows users to link multiple bank accounts in their mobile applications and pay through cell phone number, QR codes and virtual payment addresses.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is reportedly planning to introduce new features to popularize the e-rupee retail central bank digital currency (CBDC), with transaction volumes running  way short of the RBI's end-2023 target (18,000/day versus a one million/day. The features include allowing digital rupee transactions when a customer is offline and linking the e-rupee to India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI). In fact, many banks have already gone live with QR code-based e-rupee UPI interoperability, so at least this doesn't seem to be new news. Also, HDFC Bank is reportedly working with IDEMIA to build an offline e-rupee platform for feature phones.

Bank of Namibia (BON) launched its Instant Payment Project, with a targeted launch year of 2025. It will be focusing specifically on enhancing financial services in rural areas and the informal sector, thereby reducing cash dependency, and increasing transactional efficiency. Designed for inclusivity, the platform will be accessible on any device, including non-smartphones, ensuring that everyone can use it effortlessly. And according to Finextra, BON will partner with NPCI International Payments, the firm behind India's Unified payments Interface (UPI). https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/44088/namibia-signs-on-for-indias-upi-tech

"Crunchfish and IDFC FIRST Bank have now entered into a commercial license agreement. IDFC FIRST Bank have licensed both Digital Cash offline, for full offline transactions in proximity, as well as Digital Cash telecom, which enables PPI on UPI payments using the telecom network if the payer lacks internet data connectivity. Crunchfish and IDFC FIRST Bank are working closely together on integration of Digital Cash into IDFC FIRST Bank's payment apps. First release to IDFC FIRST Bank customers is planned for Q3. Initial use case will be to enable offline UPI payments using Digital Cash telecom.

"India's digital payment volume has climbed at an average annual rate of about 50 percent over the past five years. That itself is one of the world's fastest growth rates, but its expansion has been even more rapid-about 160 percent annually-in India's unique, real-time, mobile-enabled system, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). Transactions more than doubled, to 5.86 billion, in June from a year earlier as the number of participating banks jumped 44 percent, to 330. Values nearly doubled in the same period. In addition, the RBI in March introduced a UPI for feature phones (older devices with buttons instead of touchscreens) that can potentially connect 400 million users in distant rural areas."

WhatsApp will launch an in-app payment service later this year, with the service to initially be rolled out in India. A pilot trial of the payments service that is conducted on UPI standards is already underway.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and Bank Negara Malaysia announced plans to commence a phased linkage of Singapore's PayNow and Malaysia's DuitNow instant payment systems. Customers will also be able to make retail payments by scanning QR codes displayed at merchants' storefronts. The first phase, to be launched in the fourth quarter of 2022, will allow customers of participating financial institutions to make real-time fund transfers between Singapore and Malaysia using just a mobile number. In June, the MAS and the Reserve Bank of India announced plans to link PayNow and India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) real-time payment systems by July 2022.

"A recent report by EIU (The Economist Intelligence Unit) found that India is leading the real-time payments market, followed by China and South Korea. In terms of the mobile payment market, China leads instead, followed by India. Following the success of India's UPI, several countries are currently in the process of building instant real-time payment platforms. Brazil, for example, debuted its fast payment Platform, Pix, in late 2020. In early 2021, Saudi Arabia unveiled its new version of the instant-payments platform, Sarie, which facilitates a quick transfer of funds using various methods of identification, including mobile numbers and email addresses."

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates (CBUAE) have agreed to a framework to promote use of Indian rupee (INR) and UAE Dirham (AED) usage for cross-border transactions, and work towards interlinking their fast payment systems (FPSs), to cut transaction costs by eliminating dollar conversions. More specifically, they will link India's unified payments interface (UPI) with the UAE instant payment platform (IPP), and also link their respective card switches (RuPay switch and UAESWITCH).

For digital rupee users, SBI has allowed Rs 100,000 holding limit for the wallet. Users can load or unload up to Rs 25,000 per day, as per the website. Up to 20 transfers including inward and outward payments are allowed in a day. Users can pay or collect up to Rs 10,000 (versus Rs 200,000 for UPI transactions). However, the upper limit may vary from one bank to another.

Speaking at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Summit, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Shaktikanta Das said offline accessibility, which is in the works, will make the digital rupee an attractive choice for retail users. Governor Das said that the digital rupee should have the same benefits as cash - anonymity and finality of settlement. While there is currently a preference for the Universal Payments Interface (UPI) among retail users, Governor Das was hopeful that offline and programmable CBDC will change this going forward.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) announced that phase three of Project Nexus, which is aimed at enhancing cross-border payments by connecting multiple domestic instant payment systems (IPS) globally, is now complete. The next phase will see Bank Negara Malaysia, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the Bank of Thailand and domestic IPS operators - who worked together in phase three - joined by the Reserve Bank of India, expanding the potential user base to India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI), the world's largest IPS. Bank Indonesia will continue its association with the project with special observer status. Nexus is designed to standardize the way domestic IPS connect to one another. Rather than an IPS operator building custom connections for every new country to which it connects, the operator only needs to make one connection to Nexus. This single connection would allow the IPS to reach all other countries in the network.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) published a paper on the insights and lessons learned from a range of fast payment systems (FPS). Over 100 jurisdictions worldwide, including 15 jurisdictions in Latin America, have implemented FPS. The first, overview chapter draws out general insights from experiences in the Americas, such as on the impact of fast payments on financial inclusion, the role of central banks and domestic and cross-border interoperability. The next chapter looks in greater depth at Pix in Brazil, and its complementarities with other means of payment. A further chapter dives into the experiences of SINPE Móvil in Costa Rica, including the impact on banks. The final chapter explores the experience of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) in India.