Xoom, PayPal’s international digital money transfer service has announced its integration with NCIL’s/NPCI’s Unified Payment Interface (UPI). This will allow Non-Resident Indian (NRIs) and Persons of Indian Origin (PIOs) living in the USA, Canada, and Europe to now send money to their friends and family in India, in real time.
Instant Transfers
Xoom will allow the senders to send remittances instantly. They simply have to be acquainted with Indian receiver’s UPI ID. This service will be available to the user 24X7, throughout the 365 days of a year. This novel Xoom service makes sending remittances much more convenient, secured, and seamless. Xoom customers can use UPI payments to send remittances to 66 banks in India. This fairly long list of partnered banks include the State Bank of India, the Punjab National Bank, the Axis Bank, the ICICI Bank, the Kotak Mahindra Bank, the Canara Bank, the Yes Bank, the Bank of India, and several others.
Julian King, Vice President and General Manager of Xoom stated, “Xoom is a pioneer in creating fast, innovative and secure digital money transfers. Real-time payments via UPI in India have been a critical and essential payment tool during the pandemic and emerged as one of the most popular payments method in the country. We are delighted that non-resident Indians across many markets can now use UPI to send remittances back their loved ones back home with Xoom.”
UPI: The Rising Star of Digital Payments
The UPI medium of money transfer is significantly safe as it allows the user to send or receive money without having to divulge any additional bank account details. Instead of bank account numbers and IFSC codes, the virtual payment address (VPA) is used to pay when customers send money via UPI. UPI is also notably beneficial as one UPI ID can be used for multiple bank accounts. The platform allows the user to select a default account to ease the transaction process. UPI-based payments hit a new milestone in October crossing two billion transactions amounting to transactions worth $444,644 (Rs 3.3 lakh crore), according to data from the National Payments Corporation of India.