Indians Residing In 10 Countries Can Soon Use UPI Services: 10 Facts

UPI services will be enabled for NRIs in 10 countries. These include Canada, Hong Kong, Oman, the US, Australia, Singapore, UAE, the UK, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. NRIs in these countries wouldn't be required to have an Indian phone number to use UPI services.

The big UPI move will help international students, family living abroad and local businesses, said officials.

According to the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), NRIs with bank account types such as Non-Resident External (NRE) and Non-Resident Ordinary (NRO) accounts will be able to avail of UPI services using their international phone numbers.

An NRE account is used by an NRI to transfer foreign earnings to India while an NRO account helps these residents manage their income earned in India.

Currently, one must have an Indian phone number to generate a UPI Id and use the services.

The NPCI has laid certain conditions for the member banks to allow UPI services for NRIs. It states that member banks must ensure that such UPI accounts are allowed only "as per the extant FEMA (Foreign Exchange Management Act) regulations and adherence to the guidelines/instructions issued by the concerned regulatory departments of Reserve Bank of India from time to time".

The conditions further state that banks must do the "necessary Anti-Money Laundering (AML)/ Combating of Financing of Terrorism (CT) checks, and compliance validation/account level validations" of the UPI accounts. All onboarding or transaction-level checks will be applicable for such UPI accounts.

The partner banks have been given time till April 30 by the NPCI to comply with the directions.

Once the service is rolled out, NRIs living in the 10 countries will be able to open a UPI account using international phone numbers having the respective country code.

The Payments Corporation also plans to extend UPI services to other countries in near future.