The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has announced that non-residents from 10 countries, including the US, Canada, and UAE, will soon be able to transfer funds using the UPI platform. This news was reported by PTI, citing an NPCI circular dated January 10th. According to the circular, non-residents from Singapore, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Oman, Qatar, USA, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and the United Kingdom will be able to digitally transfer funds through the UPI platform from NRE/NRO accounts.
NPCI has been receiving requests for allowing non-residents to use international mobile numbers for transacting using UPI. To accommodate this, NPCI has asked UPI participants to put in place a mechanism by April 30th, under which non-residents having NRE/NRO accounts will be allowed to transfer funds using their international mobile numbers.
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...". This move will greatly improve the convenience factor for NRIs when they visit India, as they will be able to easily transfer money and make payments.
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Sarvatra Technologies Founder MD, Mandar Agashe, explained that until now, NRIs were unable to access the UPI network as the SIM binding security feature, which is an important aspect of UPI, was only available to Indian SIM card phones. However, with this change, NRIs will now be able 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 payments as well as peer-to-peer payments.
It is worth noting that NRIs and PIOs can open Non-Resident (External) Rupee (NRE) bank accounts, and anyone residing outside India can open Non-Resident Ordinary (NRO) accounts for legal rupee transactions. This new development will allow these individuals to easily transfer funds and make payments while they are visiting India.
(With inpus from PTI)
