NPCI International, the global arm of the National Payments Corporation of India, has partnered with UK-based digital payments infrastructure provider PPRO to enable UPI’s (Unified Payment Interface) acceptance in international e-commerce.
With this agreement, India will be added to PPRO’s Local Payment Method (LPM) coverage map, enabling RuPay card and UPI acceptance across PPRO’s global clients, including payment service providers (PSPs) and international merchant acquirers.
This partnership enables any company with a payment platform, including banks, payment service providers, and payment gateways, to support international e-commerce merchants selling to Indian consumers. With their chosen electronic payment choice, customers can easily make cross-border purchases in Indian Rupees.
Ritesh Shukla, CEO at NIPL, said, “UPI has revolutionised the digital payments landscape in India and is respected globally for its role in simplifying and democratising payments. By partnering with PPRO, a market leader in the payments infrastructure space, which powers a vast PSP and merchant network, Indian consumers will now be able to shop online with merchants around the world and pay safely and easily using UPI.”
“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 predicted to 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,” said Simon Black, CEO-PPRO.
Over 32.5 crore users actively use the UPI platform, which fully interoperates with 390 banks and 100 third-party apps. UPI processed more than 870 crore transactions in March 2023 alone, the highest since its launch.