International UPI QR Payments: New NPCI Rules Explained

In a new rule from April 8, 2025, NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India) has stopped all international payments made through saved QR codes on your phone, effective April 4, 2025. The circular states, “QR Share & Pay shall not be allowed for all UPI Global P2M transactions and Payer PSP to ensure that the Payer UPI app identifies the same.”

This means if you want to pay a shop or business located in another country by scanning a QR code they shared with you earlier (saved in your phone), you can no longer do so. However, you can still scan QR codes directly when you’re physically at the foreign shop, as an expert clarified.

Currently, seven countries, including France, Mauritius, Nepal, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and the UAE, accept India’s UPI Bharat QR payments.

Let’s look at what these changes mean for shoppers and businesses.

What is QR Share and Pay, and can I still use QR codes for payments in India?

Before this change, small shop owners could send their payment QR codes through WhatsApp or other messaging apps to customers. You could save these QR images in your phone gallery and later scan them using payment apps like Paytm or PhonePe to send money. This worked for both Indian and foreign businesses.

Going forward, you cannot make international payments this way anymore. Payment apps have been told to identify and block such saved QR code payments to international merchants.

For payments within India, the rules now clearly state: “QR share & pay shall have a limit of Rs 2,000/- for all P2M (non-verified offline merchants).” This means if a local merchant isn’t officially registered with NPCI, you can only pay them up to Rs 2,000 at a time using saved QR codes.

It’s worth noting that this Rs 2,000 limit for domestic payments has actually been in place for quite some time already. The major new change is specifically for international transactions, which are now completely blocked when using saved QR codes.

Wallet and Prepaid Card Loading Changes

The new rules also stop “collect requests” for adding money to digital wallets or prepaid cards. In a collect request, the business asks for money, and you approve the payment—essentially, they’re pulling funds from your account after your approval. Recently, many scams have happened through this collect request feature.

While NPCI has been planning to gradually remove collect requests for a while, this new circular specifically bans using collect requests to add money to prepaid wallets or gift cards. From now on, you’ll need to start the transaction yourself (push payment) when adding money to your wallet or buying a gift card.

These changes aim to improve payment security while still allowing legitimate transactions through proper channels, especially as UPI expands internationally.