Fintech major PhonePe announced on Tuesday that it is launching UPI payment option for international payments. This feature will allow PhonePe users in India to pay foreign merchants using UPI while traveling abroad.
At present, the countries which will be covered in this feature include UAE, Singapore, Mauritius, Nepal and Bhutan.
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 traveling overseas pay at merchant outlets abroad.”
“The entire world needs to experience UPI!” he added.
To use this feature, PhonePe can activate their UPI-linked bank account for UPI international at merchant locations via the PhonePe app. The flow is secure and will require the customer to enter their UPI pin in order to activate the service.
Recently, PhonePe hit headlines a few weeks ago for shifting its headquarters from Singapore to India. Reportedly, the investors of the Flipkart-owned digital payments firm paid Rs 8000 crore in taxes to shift its domicile to India from Singapore.
“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.
