The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has allowed non-residents from 10 countries, including the US, Canada, and UAE, to transfer funds using the UPI platform, reported PTI. The report cited an NPCI circular dated January 10 saying that non-residents from 10 countries will soon be able to digitally transfer funds through the UPI platform from NRE/NRO accounts.
NPCI said that it had been receiving requests for allowing non-residents to use international mobile numbers for transacting using UPI.
NPCI has asked the UPI participants to put in place a mechanism by April 30 under which non-residents having NRE/NRO accounts will be allowed to transfer funds using their international mobile numbers.
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Non-residents from Singapore, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Oman, Qatar, USA, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and the United Kingdom will be able to avail this facility initially.
UPI platform operator, NPCI said, “To begin with, we shall be enabling transaction from mobile numbers having the country code of (10 nations)… and shall extend for other country codes in near future…”.
PTI quoted Payments Council of India Chairman Vishwas Patel saying that the major convenience factor would be in the form of ‘payment/money transfer convenience’ for NRIs when they visit India.
While, Sarvatra Technologies Founder MD Mandar Agashe said that all these years, NRIs couldn’t access the UPI network since SIM binding, which is an important security feature of UPI, was available only to Indian SIM card phones.
“NRIs will just need to link their NRE and NRO accounts linked to their international SIM to UPI and use it like any other Indian UPI user for merchant payment as well as peer-to-peer payments,” Agashe said as quoted by PTI.
While NRIs and PIOs can open Non-Resident (External) Rupee (NRE) bank accounts, anyone residing outside India can open Non-Resident Ordinary (NRO) accounts for legel rupee transactions.
(With PTI inputs)
