The Indian government is pitching UPI as an international payment solution, and the initiative is starting to reverberate in the United Arab Emirates, where merchants are starting to accept the UPI solution in rupees as a means of attracting more Indian clientele. One of UAE's largest retail chains, Lulu, initiated UPI options in all its stores, letting people from India use their UPI apps just like they do back in their home country.
It will be directly cut from the user's bank account in India, so it would then become easy for Indian citizens and NRIs to shop in the UAE using UPI in Rupees. Since its implementation in the beginning of July, many more merchants—big and small—started to accept UPI payments here in the UAE. QR-code-based payments are accepted through Point of Sale machines.
"The number of Indian travellers in GCC is estimated to reach 98 lakh in 2024. Around 53 lakh Indians are likely to reach UAE alone", said the NPCI.
The Government of India, Reserve Bank of India, and NPCI International are putting in joint efforts to take UPI to the global level. It is already officially accepted in Nepal, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, UAE, Singapore, France, and Bhutan. UPI-based transactions jumped 35 per cent year-on-year to Rs 20.64 lakh crore in July as against Rs 20.07 lakh crore last year.
UPI transactions went up by almost 4 per cent month on month to 14.44 billion in July from 13.89 billion in June. On the back of growing adoption of UPI across the world, average daily transaction volume was at 466 million in July as against 463 million in June.
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