What is the UPI-UPU Integration Project launched by Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia in Dubai?

Union minister Jyotiraditya M. Scindia launched the UPI-UPU Integration Project at the 28th Universal Postal Congress in Dubai on early Tuesday morning. This represents a landmark step in the evolution of global remittances.

What is the UPI-UPU Integration Project?

According to a Ministry of Communications’ statement, this project is conceived as a joint effort between the Department of Posts (DoP), NPCI International Payments Ltd (NIPL), and the Universal Postal Union (UPU).

Under the integration project, the country’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and the international UPU Interconnection Platform (IP) will together be used to facilitate cross-border payments. The aim is to create a seamless, fast, secure, and affordable payments channel that directly serves millions of families relying on remittances.

This is particularly significant because remittance corridors and international payments have long been plagued by high fees, slow processing times, and limited accessibility.

This integration offers an alternative system that reduces these processing costs and thus widening financial access.

This move is set to position India Post as a digital leader in the international postal sector.

The UPU currently has 192 member countries in its framework. Under the project, Scindia shared that there will be expertise-sharing, capacity-building, and cooperative innovation initiatives undertaken in the postal and payments domains.

“[This project entails the] integration of UPU International Platform with India’s UPI. This partnership unites the reliability of the postal network with the speed and affordability of UPI. Families across borders can send money faster, safer and at much lower cost. This is more than a tech launch, a social compact. This reaffirms that public infrastructure, built for citizens, can be linked across borders to serve humanity more effectively,” said Scindia during his address.

What did Scindia say about India Post in UAE?

During his address to the Congress, Scindia said that the country will pledge a $10 million investment in boosting the global postal sector, with a special focus on building capabilities in digital payments, eCommerce, and expanding fundamentals training for capacity building opportunities for officials across globe. Under this effort, India will host regional workshops and dialogues ‘ensuring every region has a strong equal voice.’

“We have signed Letter of Intents (LoIs) with Union partners including Africa, Caribbean, Latin America formalising contracts on trading, digital finance, ecommerce,” Scindia added.

Scindia shared that in the last decade, the country’s economic growth has been made possible due to its focus on inclusion facilitated by Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI). He enumerated key examples such as UPI, Aadhar, Jan Dhan Yojana and DigiLocker that have helped advance its goals of accessibility.

“Today India Post has 165,000 points of presence, world’s largest postal network, reaching the busiest and the remotest villages of the country. [It] delivered over 900 million letters, 70 million parcels. Our post office savings bank accounts today house 663 million accounts, 250 billion dollars within those accounts,” shared Scindia.

He added that in this regard India Post is evolving and undergoing significant transformation. The postal network of the country is restructuring its business processes and streamlining operations across multiple verticals, with an investment of close to $1 billion in building advanced postal network technologies to strengthen its infrastructure.

Alongside these reforms, Scindia put forward India’s candidature for the Council of Administration and the Postal Operations Council of the Universal Postal Union.