UPI Expansion: Send Funds to Bahrain in Seconds with New Payment Link

Through a collaboration between NPCI International Payments Limited (NIPL) and BENEFIT, Bahrain's top electronic payments network, Bahrain and India are going to offer instant cross-border remittances. The goal of the partnership is to facilitate real-time money transfers for users in both nations by linking India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) with Bahrain's Electronic Fund Transfer System (EFTS).

The merger of the two payment networks will enable the direct connection of UPI to Fawri+, thereby allowing quicker and safer transfers. Thus, Fund transfer among the users in India and Bahrain will happen almost instantaneously, thereby erasing the delays that were usually a part of international remittances.

The project is under the watchful eyes of the regulatory authorities from both countries. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB) are the ones taking care of the project and ensuring that it adheres to the regulations relating to cross-border payments and that the financial security standards are met.

One of the expectations from this move is that it will favor the large Indian populace in Bahrain, which is about 30% of the total population of the country. This corridor is aimed at simplifying remittances, making them cheaper, and more accessible thus making the process of financial inclusion and connecting the two nations through financial transactions more effective.

Experts in the industry consider this partnership as having the potential to be a reference for the upcoming international UPI linkages and hence might open up the door for other cross-border payment corridors in the Gulf Region and even beyond.