After the three-day-long Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting, the Reserve Bank India’s (RBI) governor Shaktikanata Das has said that India will extend permission to all the inbound travelers for the G20 countries to use Unified Payments Interface (UPI) service.

Discussing the decision the RBI governor has added that travellers from these countries will soon be able to use fintech platforms for making payments and engaging in transactions at the selected airports in India. 

The development comes after Das announces a 25 bps hike in repo rate. The revised repo rate is now 6.50 per cent. 

"Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has become a ubiquitous payment instrument for retail electronic payments in India. An enhancement has recently been made to provide UPI access to non-resident Indians who have international mobile numbers linked to their NRE / NRO accounts. It is now proposed to permit all inbound travellers to India also to access UPI for their merchant payments (P2M) while they are in the country," RBI says in a statement. 

"To start with, this facility will be extended to travellers from the G-20 countries, arriving at select international airports. Going forward, this facility will be enabled across all other entry points in the country. Necessary operational instructions will be issued shortly," It adds. 

Recently, the National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) revealed that UPI transaction value in India rose to 12.98 lakh crore in January 2023 from Rs 12.82 lakh crore in December 2022, witnessing a 1.2 per cent spike. Additionally, it registered Rs 803 crore transaction count in January 2023 compared to Rs 782 crore in December 2022.