Bhutanese users face UPI payment issues in India

Bhutanese travelers are experiencing inconsistent success with digital payments in India due to the ongoing phased rollout of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) linkage. While the service has processed over 8,600 successful transactions in the 20 days following its September 17 launch, many users report transaction failures and error messages stating that merchant UPI addresses cannot be validated.

Foreign Affairs and External Trade Minister D. N. Dhungyel stated that these failures likely occur because many merchants use banks that are not yet enabled to accept payments from Bhutanese mobile banking applications. Currently, only six Indian banks support these payments. Integration is underway for several major institutions, including State Bank of India, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Union Bank of India, and SDF FC Bank, as well as third-party platforms such as PhonePe, Google Pay, and Paytm. Once these integrations are complete, acceptance coverage is expected to reach approximately 80 per cent of UPI payments in India.