NPCI International Payments Limited (NIPL), the international arm of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), on Wednesday inked a pact with the central bank of South American Peru.

With this development, Peru will soon have a UPI-like instant payments system.

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Peru will be the first country in South America to introduce UPI technology to its digital payment ecosystem. The move aims to reduce reliance on cash-based transactions and expand the use of digital payments to Peru’s large unbanked population.

UPI’s collaborative and open banking ethos enables greater connectivity and interoperability with both domestic and international payment networks, fostering innovation and resilience in the Peruvian payment ecosystem.

Ritesh Shukla, CEO, NPCI International, said: “We will be working together to address our common objective of promoting digital payments, financial inclusion, cost optimization, and transparency in the payment landscape, with scope for further scalability and adaptability to embrace future technological advancements and market demands.”

Julio Velarde, Governor, BCRP, remarked: “The support of the Reserve Bank of India has been a cornerstone of this agreement. The BCRP aims to promote financial inclusion, security, and efficiency, and to introduce new use cases in digital payments.”

This is NIPL’s second partnership with a central bank to deploy the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) stack in the international market. In May this year, the payments body entered into an agreement with the Bank of Namibia (BoN) for developing an instant payment system like UPI in the African nation.

The development follows NPCI’s push to take UPI rails international after breaking into other markets such as France, Sri Lanka, Singapore, and Mauritius.