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RBI extends UPI payment facility to foreign visitors
In the first phase only visitors from G-20 countries will be allowed to make UPI payments to enable them to shop from the country.
The Unified Payments Interface (UPI), a popular mode of digital payments in India will be made available to foreign visitors arriving in the country, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced on February 8, 2023.
"UPI has become hugely popular for retail digital payments in India. It is now proposed to permit all inbound travelers to India to use UPI for their merchant payments (P2M) while they are in the country," RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said while presenting a report of the bi-monthly Monetary Policy Committee.
The UPI gateway will first be made available to the G-20 travelers arriving from over 19 nations (Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, United Kingdom, and the United States) and the European Union make up the Group of Twenty (G-20).
This comes after, the service was made available for Indian residents in 10 countries abroad last month. The diaspora in US, UK, Australia, UAE, Canada, Singapore, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Hong Kong could connect their NRE account (a bank account opened in India) to make the payments from their international mobile numbers.
The first glimmers toward ending a near-record long federal government shutdown were seen in the U.S. Capitol on Nov. 3, as leading Senate Republicans and Democrats talked of a possible "off-ramp" to the disruption.
For 34 days, a standoff between Congress and President Donald Trump has shuttered a range of federal programs including those that provide aid for low-income Americans, U.S. soldiers' paychecks and airport operations.
A new fiscal year began on Oct. 1 with no legislation enacted to fund these activities. Thousands of federal workers have now been furloughed, and the battle has hung up around $1.7 trillion in discretionary funds that account for about one-third of total U.S. spending annually.
ALSO READ: 42 million Americans will lose food assistance in November amid government shutdown
"I’m optimistic," Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican, told reporters when asked about prospects for ending the government shutdown that has many federal employees performing their jobs without paychecks.
Asked if he was confident of ending the shutdown, Thune, of South Dakota, hedged, saying: "Don’t push it."
The comment was a small but significant change in tone. Democrats have linked government funding to extending a U.S. health insurance subsidy that is on the verge of expiring.
Low-income families are seeing their food stamp benefits expire or only partially funded.
"Based on, sort of, my gut of how these things operate, I think we're getting close to an off-ramp here," Thune said.
The No. 2 Senate Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois said, "I sense that, too." But he quickly added: "We're still stuck with this premise of what we're going to do about healthcare costs."
Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins of Maine told reporters that progress was made with Democrats offering specific language to break the impasse and staffs from both parties laboring over the weekend. "It just feels better this week," she said.
Nonetheless, Collins admonished: "It could all fall apart again. And I don't mean to imply there's an agreement."
Meanwhile, a bipartisan handful of House of Representatives moderates floated a compromise plan.
Axios reported a group of four House centrists, three Republicans and one Democrat, offered a plan to extend the expanded Affordable Care Act tax credit for two years, but with new caps on people whose income is at the upper end of qualifying.
Since Oct. 1, groups of Senate Republicans and Democrats have held sporadic private meetings to look at ways to resolve the gridlock that has consumed Washington but so far have been unable to get to the finish line.
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