Prime Minister Narenda Modi announced India's plans to integrate Unified Payments Interface (UPI) with Malaysia’s national payments network Paynet.
This comes after PM Narendra Modi held bilateral talks with Malaysia's PM Anwar Ibrahim in New Delhi.
"It has been decided to establish a Digital Council and to create a start-up Alliance for cooperation in digital technology. Work will also be done on connecting India’s UPI and Malaysia’s PayNet,” PM Modi reportedly said.
The talks also involved the establishment of an India-Malaysia alliance to foster cooperation between the new-age tech companies of the countries. The India-Malaysia start-up alliance talks also brought into focus the ongoing discussions between Startup India and Cradle Fund of Malaysia as well as other stakeholders.
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India and Malaysia talked about enhancing mutual cooperation in areas such as semiconductors, fintech, defence, AI and quantum computing. They also signed a series of Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) on cooperation in the areas of technology, digital payments and start-ups.
Agreements were signed between the International Financial Centre Services Authority (IFCSA) and Labuan Financial Services Authority to foster mutual cooperation in the financial services space.
The talks also underscored the importance of a timely review of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between India and ASEAN to further enhance economic cooperation
The developments comes reportedly at a time when UPI parent National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has aggressively pitched the payments app as part of India's broader effort to extend its network globally.
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The usage of UPI in the country has seen a tremendous growth in the country in the last few years. It reportedly achieved 1,444 crore transactions worth Rs 20.64 Lakh crore in July.
UPI is currently operational in Singapore, Bhutan, France, UAE, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, and Nepal.
Recently, external affairs minister S Jaishankar’s visit to Maldives saw India signing a pact with the Maldives to roll out UPI in the India Ocean Archipelago.
