Overview

• Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal inaugurated the service on October 6 in Doha, extending UPI beyond last month’s rollout at Hamad International Airport duty-free outlets.
• The deployment is a collaboration between NIPL/NPCI, Qatar National Bank as acquirer, and gateway provider NETSTARS using its StarPay platform.
• QNB has enabled QR code UPI acceptance at merchants’ PoS terminals, with LuLu Hypermarket as the first retail chain live in Qatar.
• Qatar becomes the eighth country to accept UPI for cashless transactions, reducing reliance on foreign cards or currency for Indian travelers.
• Goyal said the launch will make remittances faster and cheaper for about 830,000 Indians in Qatar, noting UPI handles roughly 640 million transactions daily in India.