Trinidad and Tobago Partners With UPI Developer NPCI to Develop Digital Payment Platform

Trinidad and Tobago is working with a subsidiary of NPCI, the developer of India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI), to implement a similar solution in the Caribbean nation.

NPCI International Payments Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of NPCI that’s devoted to the deployment of UPI outside of India, entered into a strategic partnership with the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Trinidad and Tobago to develop a UPI-like real-time payments, the organizations said in a Friday (Sept. 27) press release.

“Fashioned on India’s UPI, the digital payment platform will facilitate innovation in the FinTech sector, enhance the technical resiliency of the current payment infrastructure by providing a complementary, non-competing digital payments platform with increased security through the reduced used of cash,” a spokesperson of the Ministry of Digital Transformation said in the release. “Moreover, successful implementation will contribute to the financial inclusion of our unbanked citizens.”

In this collaboration, the organizations will work to establish a real-time payments platform for both person-to-person (P2P) and person-to-merchant (P2M) transactions, according to the release.

They will leverage technology and experiences from UPI to modernize Trinidad and Tobago’s financial ecosystem and enhance its accessibility, affordability, connectivity with domestic and international payment networks, and interoperability, the release said.

In India, during the month of August, UPI registered nearly 15 billion transactions with an estimated value of $245 billion, per the release.

“Trinidad and Tobago is taking significant steps towards advancing its financial infrastructure, and we are proud to support them in building a secure, sovereign and scalable payments platform,” NPCI International CEO Ritesh Shukla said in the release. “Our experience with UPI in India has demonstrated how real-time payments can transform economies, by improving access to essential financial services and reducing reliance on cash.”

Digital wallets have become the preferred payment method for 55% of retail purchases in India, and 80% of the consumers who use digital wallets opt for UPI as the underlying payment method, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence and Cybersource collaboration, the “2023 Global Digital Shopping Index: India Edition.”

In addition, NPCI has been effectively making UPI into a payments rail that has reach into other countries, setting the stage for real-time payments to be more closely linked, PYMNTS reported in January 2023.