The NPCI has allowed non-residents from 10 countries including the US, Canada and the United Arab Emirates to transfer funds digitally through the UPI platform from NRE/NGO accounts. The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) announced in a circular that it has received requests to allow non-residents to use international mobile numbers for Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions.
Accordingly, the NPCI in a circular of January 10 asked that UPI Participants to introduce a mechanism by April 30 for non-residents with NRE/NRO accounts to transfer funds using their international mobile numbers.
Initially, this facility will be available to non-residents in 10 countries – Singapore, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Oman, Qatar, USA, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and United Kingdom.
While NRIs and PIOs can open Non-Resident (External) Rupee (NRE) bank accounts, Non-Resident Ordinary (NRO) accounts can be opened by any person residing outside of India for bonafide transactions in Rupee.
The NPCI, which operates the UPI platform, said: “Initially, we will allow transactions from mobile phone numbers with the country code of (10 nations)… and will expand to other country codes in the near future…”.
Payments Council of India Chairman Vishwas Patel said the key convenience factor comes in the form of “payment/money transfer convenience” for NRIs when visiting India.
Sarvatra Technologies founder MD Mandar Agashe said that for all these years, NRIs could not access the UPI network because SIM binding, which is an important security feature of UPI, was only available for Indian SIM card phones .
“NRIs just need to link their NRE and NRO accounts linked to their international SIM card to UPI and use it like any other Indian UPI user for merchant payments as well as peer-to-peer payments,” Agashe said.
