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How To Sign Up For India UPI As Foreigner?
I just arrived in India from the US and everyone uses digital UPI payment (like Venmo).
I am trying to sign up for it but you need to be an Indian Citizen or do KYC.
Is there any easy way for non-Indians to sign up for UPI?
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3 Replies
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I was just in India for work.
If you go to Amazon.In, you can set up Amazon Pay UPI that doesn’t have KYC under 10,000 INR (around $100 USD).
If you do KYC, then you can load more than 10,000 INR a month but you don’t have to do KYC if you are under this limit.
The only requirement to get the account is that you need an Indian cell phone number (which you can get anywhere) but otherwise, works no problem for Americans.
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I visited India also for work 3 months ago.
There is a company called Cheq that specializes in setting up UPI for foreigners or NRI.
It costs around $10 USD to set up but you can load the account with a foreign credit card, which all the other companies don’t allow.
cheq.money
Cheq - UPI Wallets for everyone
Cheq UPI wallets helps you spend anywhere in India safely, smartly and instantly.
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India has somehow regressed when it comes to credit card acceptance, in the decades I have been going (my wife is Indian).
I was recently there and almost 50% of places will tell you either that their card machine is “broken” or that their machine can’t take foreign credit cards.
I suspect they don’t want to pay the card processing fees, now that UPI exists.
In 1 single day, I went to a famous well known sit down restaurant in Mumbai and their card machine “couldn’t connect” so I had to walk to the bank and get cash, and then later that same day I went to a dentist and the same thing, his machine couldn’t take foreign cards, so I had to go back to the ATM.
If you are visiting and don’t want to deal with cash, then I highly recommend getting UPI because many places just don’t take card anymore.
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