Context
Nepal is going to become the first country to adopt India’s UPI system, which will play a pivotal role in transforming the digital economy of the neighbouring country, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).
Key-points
- NPCI International Payments Ltd (NIPL), the international arm of NPCI, has joined hands with Gateway Payments Service (GPS) & Manam Infotech to provide the services.
- GPS is the authorised payment system operator in Nepal.
- Manam Infotech will deploy Unified Payments Interface (UPI) in Nepal.
- The collaboration will serve the larger digital public good in Nepal and bolster interoperable real-time person-to-person (P2P) and person-to-merchant (P2M) transactions in the neighbouring country.
- Nepal shall be the first country outside of India to adopt UPI as the payments platform driving the digitalization of cash transactions and furthering the vision and objectives of the Nepal Government and Nepal Rastra Bank as the Central bank.
About National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI)
- National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is an umbrella organisation for all retail payments systems in India.
- The Reserve Bank of India’s specialised section, the National Payments Corporation of India.
- It was set up with the guidance and support of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Indian Banks’ Association (IBA).
- It was incorporated as a Section 25 company under Companies Act 1956(now Section 8 of Companies Act 2013) and is aimed to operate for the benefit of all the member banks and their customers.
- National Payments Corporation of India was founded in 2008.
- NPCI is managed by the Ministry of Finance of the Government of India.
- It was established by the Reserve Bank of India to manage India’s retail payment and settlement systems.
- It has successfully played a pioneering role in development of a domestic card payment network called RuPay, reducing the dependency on international card schemes.
About NPCI International Payments Limited (NIPL)
- NPCI has established a separate business to market its product internationally.
- Countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East have approached NPCI to strengthen their payment infrastructure.
- NIPL wants closer cooperation with international partners in areas such as cross-border remittance, UPI implementation, and the use of indigenously produced technologies in digital payments.
