NRIs have been facing problems with UPI (Unique Payment Interface) on their international numbers until now. NRI will be able to access safe payment through UPI, be it on their National or International mobile numbers.
The National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) has issued their newest guideline which authorises NRIs of 10 countries, who will be able to access their UPIs via their International Mobile numbers, which wasn’t possible before. The catch is the NRIs can only use their UPI from authorized Non-Resident External (NRE) or Non-Resident Ordinary (NRO) accounts.
As per the newly published NPCI guidelines, Indian living abroad now have the freedom of syncing their International Mobile number with their banks. It’s advised to remember that the International code of the country is to be added to the number for it to be valid. A note of caution is that setting up any and every UPI, for any payment app requires owning a valid National (Indian) mobile number.
The process is such that when someone activates any UPI from say Paytm or Google Pay, the app sends a One Time Password or (OTP) from the bank, confirming that said number is synced with the bank. Here comes the predicament of NRIs having to keep the National number ‘alive’ for the syncing and money transfer to work. International Roaming isn’t cheap and this used to cost Indian living abroad a heavy capital just to keep the national number valid.
Now they don’t have to go through such pains and can sync their UPI with an International number. The NPCI order specifies that member banks must ensure that UPI accounts are allowed in accordance with existing FEMA regulations as well as guidelines/instructions issued by the Reserve Bank of India’s concerned regulatory departments from time to time. AML/CT checks, compliance validations, and account level validations, as necessary, need to be applied to these bank accounts in accordance with the extent.
NPCI has said it will begin enabling the transaction from mobile numbers that have the country codes of the below countries along with the current domestic country code. They plan on extending this UPI facility to other countries as soon as possible.
For now, here is a list of all who can make use of this privilege. They are – Singapore, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Oman, Qatar, the United States of America, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates & United Kingdom. It is to be remembered that personnel in these countries still need an NRO / NRE bank account in order to make successful transactions.
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