This is promising, but it’s not as exciting as one would assume — it’s a very limited rollout, ensuring the use/don’t use UPI decision has to be made quite quickly for people unfamiliar with it, which is most tourists.

> To start with, it will be available to travelers from G-20 countries, at select international airports (Bengaluru, Mumbai and New Delhi).

> Eligible travellers would be issued Prepaid Payment Instruments (PPI) wallets linked to UPI for making payments at merchant outlets.

> The PPIs shall be issued after physical verification of the passport and visa of the customers at the point of issuance.

Also good luck finding the UPI PPI sale point. And of course it’s extremely limited, to 20 countries.

And the big one

> PPIs can be issued in the form of wallets linked to UPI and can be used for merchant payments (P2M) only.

This is “limited UPI” — you can’t use it for P2P payments or paying your friends and acquaintances. And does UPI Merchant Payments have payment protection / easy dispute resolution yet? If not, tourists would be far better off sticking to cards.

So yeah, good on the RBI for making a start, but this doesn’t help tourists realise even a fraction of UPI’s convenience.

I’m sure one day visitors and regular tourists will be prompted to set up a UPI wallet when they get their visa / eVisa, top up UPI online across the length and breadth of India, and in fact be able to top up their UPI wallets before landing in the country. But there are many bureaucratic barriers before that happens.

I would say, there isn't much of "dispute resolution" in digital payments in India. Sure if someone steals your ATM ad stuff and transfers money, you can go to bank and they will try to get that back but on the whole, it is generally understood once the payment is received, its gone from your end.

We don't have charge backs or fraudulent claims because everything is conscious, with an otp so buyer beware