Consumers can seamlessly make cross-border purchases in Rupees, says PPRO
PPRO, the leading digital payments infrastructure provider with offices in Asia Pacific, Europe, North and Latin Americas, has signed a strategic agreement with NPCI International Payments Limited (NIPL) to offer global partners access to Unified Payments Interface (UPI), India’s fastest-growing, real-time payment system, for cross-border transactions.
The agreement, supported by a new framework co-developed with NIPL, paves the way for the first merchants to go live in the coming months.
By connecting directly to UPI via PPRO’s digital payments infrastructure, international payment service providers (PSPs) enable merchants to tap into India’s huge online consumer base easily and securely, without the need for setting up a legal entity in India, settlement to an India-based bank or for uploading invoices to clear funds.
For consumers, this means they can seamlessly make cross-border purchases in Indian Rupees using their favourite payment method.
Launched in 2016, UPI is India’s most popular instant payment system, already processing 60% of all domestic payments. It has over 325 million active users, supports 390 banks and 100 third-party apps within a single mobile application. In March 2023 alone, UPI processed over 8.7 billion transactions, the highest since its launch.
“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,” Simon Black, CEO at PPRO, said on 27 April 2023.
International payment service providers and their merchants can now easily tap into an e-commerce market that is expected to reach an estimated US$111 billion next year, and predicted to almost double to US$200 billion by 2026, he said, citing industry data.
NIPL CEO Ritesh Shukla elaborated, “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.” fiinews.com
