After Singapore, UAE, Nepal, and Bhutan, France will be the next country to accept payments using the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and RuPay Cards.
NPCI International Payments Ltd (NIPL), the international arm of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), on Thursday signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Lycra Network of France for acceptance of UPI and Rupay Cards in France.
Speaking to ANI, Union communications minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said, "India is doing 5.5 billion UPI transactions in a month. Today's MoU with France is a big achievement for us."
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India's Ambassador to France Jawed Ashraf said to ANI that India's UPI and Rupay cards will soon be accepted in France, "We have started the process in France by signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) NPCI, International and Lycra Network of France."
Ashraf said India has to discuss the payments system with the central bank, the regulator as well as companies here in France, "In France, there is very low use of digital payments. But it needs to be integrated and seamless. It lacks efficiency as we have in India."
The ambassador added, "India is leading the digital technology world. India has grabbed the semiconductor shortage issue as an opportunity. If we talk about the Vande Bharat train which is a 'Make in India' product, I'm sure that we will see the Vande Bharat train in Europe within 5-6 years."
The homegrown NPCI is an umbrella organisation for facilitating retail payments and settlement in India through the RuPay gateway. It is an initiative of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Indian Banks' Association (IBA) to create a robust payment and settlement system.
UPI is among the most successful real-time payments (RTP) systems globally, providing simplicity, safety, and security in P2P and P2M transactions in India. UPI is a mobile-based fast payment system that facilitates customers to make instant payments using a Virtual Payment Address (VPA) created by the customer.
This eliminates the risk of sharing bank account details with the remitter. UPI supports both Person-to-Person (P2P) and Person-to-Merchant (P2M) payments and enables a user to send or receive money.
