India-Nepal digital payment gateway likely to start from Feb: Indian Envoy

The digital payment gateway between India and Nepal is expected to start in the first phase from the end of February 2024, Indian Ambassador Naveen Srivastava announced on Friday.
Ambassador Srivastava made the announcement referring to the agreement between NPCI and NCHL, which was signed during the visit of Nepali PM Pushpa Kamal Dahal to India earlier this year.
“Fintech is a revolution that is happening all across the world and particularly in India. You might have heard about Unified Payment Interface (UPI), how India to date is the leading country in the world in terms of digital payments and it beats other countries by far. This fintech revolution provides an avenue for further collaboration between India and Nepal,” Srivastava said on Friday.
He added, “We’ve already undertaken this journey, the Ru-pay card was launched last year in Nepal and ambassador (Manjeev Singh) Puri was instrumental in initiating that process. We taking it further taking support of Governor (Maha Prasad) Adhikari and the Finance Minister earlier this year when PM Prachanda visited India NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India) and Nepal Clearing House (Limited) and signed an MoU to start and implement digital cross border payment.”.
The Indian envoy affirmed hope that by the end of February 2024 end, the NPCI and NCHL payment system will start, which will allow people to people cross-border payments on an instant basis.
Ambassador Srivastava made the address during the inaugural session of Nepal BFSI (Banking, Financial Service and Insurance Summit) organized by the India-Nepal Center of the PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PHDCCI) on Friday.
Earlier in June, the NPCI International Payments Limited (NIPL) and Nepal Clearing House Limited (NCHL) had joined hands to facilitate cross-border digital payments between India and Nepal by integrating the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) of India and National Payments Interface (NPI) of Nepal.
During Nepali PM Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s visit to India, an MoU was exchanged between NIPL and NCHL at Hyderabad House, New Delhi. As per the MoU, both bodies intend to establish cross-border connectivity for financial transactions between the two countries to ease fund transfers and merchant payments by users.