Tuesday saw the launch of the UPI payment option for international payments from fintech powerhouse PhonePe. Users of PhonePe in India will be able to travel overseas and make UPI payments to foreign businesses.
Currently, this feature will cover Nepal, Bhutan, Mauritius, the United Arab Emirates, and Singapore.
Commenting on this development, Rahul Chari, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of the company said, “Over the past six years, all over India we have been lucky to experience the UPI payments revolution transforming our daily lives. UPI international is the first major step in letting the rest of the world experience UPI too.”
Chari said that the launch of this feature will prove to be a “gamechanger" and will “completely transform the way Indians travelling overseas pay at merchant outlets abroad.”
PhonePe can use their UPI-linked bank account for UPI international at merchant locations by activating it using the PhonePe app. The process is secure, and in order to activate the service, the customer must input their UPI pin.
A few weeks ago, PhonePe made news for moving its headquarters from Singapore to India. According to reports, the investors of the Flipkart-owned digital payment company paid Rs 8000 crore in taxes for the company to change its domicile from Singapore to India.
“If you want to move to India as a domicile, we have to do a fresh market valuation and pay tax on the delta. Our investors have paid almost Rs 8000 crores in taxes just to allow us to come back to India,” Sameer Nigam, Co-founder and CEO, PhonePe said at a live YouTube session.
