India and Sri Lanka Collaborate to Integrate UPI and Lanka Pay
Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced on Saturday that the governments of India and Sri Lanka are jointly working towards enhancing fintech sector connectivity. This collaboration aims to link the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) of India with Sri Lanka’s Lanka Pay.
The announcement came as PM Modi addressed the inauguration event of ferry services between Nagapattinam in India and Kankesanthurai in Sri Lanka through a video message. This collaboration follows a previous agreement signed between PM Modi and Sri Lanka’s President Ranil Wickremesinghe, which focused on the acceptance of UPI in Sri Lanka. This agreement was a highlight of President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s two-day visit to India.
In 2022, the National Payments Corporation Of India (NPCI), responsible for offering UPI services, entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with France’s online payment system, Lyra. Furthermore, in 2023, an agreement was signed between UPI and Singapore’s PayNow, facilitating users in both countries to conduct cross-border transactions seamlessly.
It’s noteworthy that countries like the UAE, Bhutan, and Nepal have already integrated the UPI payment system. As for UPI’s performance, managed by the NPCI, it recorded 10.56 billion transactions in September. This was a slight decrease from the 10.58 billion transactions in August, marking the first instance where UPI transactions surpassed the 10 billion threshold.