Bhutan Adopts India's BHIM-UPI For Mobile-Based Payments: Report

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and her Bhutanese counterpart Lyonpo Namgay Tshering together initiated the BHIM-UPI in Bhutan on Tuesday.

The Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM) is the country’s digital payments application that operates through the United Payments Interface (UPI).

It facilitates instant real-time payments and makes way for transacting through multiple bank accounts into a single application.

During the launch, the Indian cabinet minister carried out a live transaction via BHIM-UPI after purchasing an organic product through a Bhutanese OGOP centre.

The Union Finance Ministry asserted that this latest initiative has seamlessly connected the payments systems of the two countries. This will result in benefitting scores of Indian businessmen and tourists who travel to Bhutan every year.

“BHIM-UPI is one of the achievements of India in terms of fintech in which India invested a lot & we have also encouraged our start-ups to come up with solutions. Therefore, BHIM-UPI stands out as one of the very good successful experiments that we have undertaken,” Sitharaman’s statement was quoted in a report by the Times of India.

Bhutan is India’s first immediate neighbor to allow for mobile-based payments through the BHIM application.

The two countries have already authorized interoperability in terms of accepting Rupay cards in each other’s nations in two phases across the last couple of years.