Jamaica looks to replicate India's UPI success

Jamaica is looking to replicate India's success in digital payments, leveraging technological advances New Delhi has made in digital payments, the Caribbean Island nation's Prime Minister Andrew Holness said on Thursday.

On his first visit to India, Holness held a roundtable discussion with Digital India Foundation (DIF) officials and policymakers to understand the architecture needed.

"Jamaica has established as part of its development goals to become a digital society and we have already established our national identification system which is similar to your Aadhaar system here," Holness told PTI in an interview.

He said his country is "trying to develop strong partnerships with Indian technology particularly the public infrastructure and the unified payment interface (UPI)."

The roundtable was to discuss how India's digital public infrastructure and UPI infrastructure could assist Jamaica to make it a digital economy, he said.

During the visit, an agreement for cooperation in digital public infrastructure and linking online payment systems was also signed.

"We are hoping we will be able to do it very quickly but it's a process. The building of the partnership is the first phase," he said.

Talking about his visit, Holness said India is an amazing country, diverse but unified and very innovative.

"I think India is doing an amazing job and Jamaica wants to make a partner with India in these areas," he said.

Calling India the pharmacy of the world, he said Jamaica was looking for increased collaboration in healthcare, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, security and defence and technology.

Another agreement signed was for joining the Global Biofuels Alliance.

"These are issues about energy security, energy efficiency and climate change and all three are issues that face Jamaica and countries like India, working together with India in this regard will be very useful," he said.

With a passion for cricket binding the two nations, the Prime Minister hoped for greater collaboration with the world's biggest cricketing nation, India will help bring back the lost glory for the post in the Island nation.

The same was also true for athletics. "So we have signed a MoU on sports we will be collaborating with India to help develop your runners as well," he said.