NPCI International Payments, a wholly-owned subsidiary of National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), entered into partnership with digital payments infrastructure provider PPRO to facilitate global e-commerce payments through UPI.  

The agreement is aimed at expanding RuPay card and UPI acceptance across global clients such as payment service providers (PSPs) and global merchant acquirers, NPCI said in a release.

It will drive NPCI International’s expansion into foreign markets and will add India to PPRO’s Local Payment Method (LPM) coverage map. It will also allow global PSPs, banks, payment gateways and enterprises with payment platforms to expand globally giving international e-commerce merchants access to Indian consumers.

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Consumers can shop online worldwide and make cross-border purchases in rupees, safely using UPI, the release said.

“International payment service providers and their merchants can now easily tap into an e-commerce market that is expected to reach an estimated $111 billion next year and almost double to $200 billion by 2026. By integrating UPI into PPRO’s digital payments infrastructure through a single connection, we have removed all the operational complexity for our partners to sell cross-border into India at scale,” Simon Black, CEO-PPRO said.

The UPI network processes 60 per cent of all domestic payments and 40 per cent of instant payments processed globally. It has over 32.5 crore active users, with 390 banks and 100 third-party apps interoperable on the network. In March 2023, UPI processed over 870 crore transactions, the highest since its launch.