Google Pay and India's UPI partner to expand international reach

India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI), a widely used mobile payment system, has partnered with Google Pay to explore international expansion opportunities.

First of all, what is UPI?

UPI is a digital payment system in India. It allows you to transfer money between bank accounts instantly using your phone, pay merchants easily via QR codes or virtual addresses, and send and receive money requests in real time. Most UPI transactions are free.

The collaboration aims to achieve the following:

• Facilitate cross-border payments for Indian travelers and foreigners traveling to India. The partnership seeks to enable Indian users to make international payments using their existing UPI infrastructure. 
• The agreement also involves knowledge sharing and technical assistance aimed at helping other countries develop their digital payment systems inspired by UPI’s model.
• The partnership intends to explore ways to streamline cross-border remittances for Indian expats using UPI-based solutions. This could offer faster, more efficient, and cheaper alternative money transfer channels.

Previous initiatives include linking UPI with Singapore’s real-time payment system and exploring collaborations with countries like Sri Lanka and the United Arab Emirates.

The UPI platform has experienced significant success within India, processing over $209 billion worth of transactions in November 2023 alone. But whether this success can translate to the international arena remains to be determined.

Personally, I believe this would be most useful for travelers traveling to India who do not have an Indian bank account, given that they plan to add a functionality that makes it easier for me. 

More here.