Travel Guides & Articles
India And UAE Revolutionize Payments With UPI Integration, Creating A Seamless Digital Experience
Friday, July 11, 2025
National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) International Payments Limited (NIPL), the overseas subsidiary of India’s National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), has made remarkable efforts at increasing the use of India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) in the UAE. As a result of millions of Indians visiting the UAE every year and the nation’s increasing drive for a cashless economy, the growth represents an important breakthrough, reaping benefits for consumers as well as businesses across international boundaries.
UPI, India’s real-time, account-to-account payment system, has transformed the payment process in India. Processing a staggering 18 billion transactions per month, UPI is among the largest digital payment systems globally. UPI enables instantaneous, secure, and seamless transactions through mobile applications, giving users a convenient and easy method to make and receive transactions. Due to the open architecture and strong security features of the UPI system, it can conform to global regulatory landscapes, such as the UAE.
The UAE is one of India’s major travel and remittance corridors. Indians are the largest overseas group of visitors to the UAE, with the Ministry of Tourism of India recording that seven million Indians visit the UAE annually. UPI’s introduction into the UAE’s payment infrastructure has the potential to simplify the travel process of these visitors, allowing them to process transactions through the same mobile applications used back in India. This allows Indian visitors to enjoy a convenient, secure, and familiar method of payment while reducing the use of cash, speeding up transactions, and reducing costs for firms.
UAE’s Initiative Towards a Cashless Economy and the Role of UPI
The UAE has set an ambitious target of achieving 90% digital transactions by 2026, a goal that aligns perfectly with NPCI International’s efforts to scale UPI in the country. To achieve this vision, the UAE government has been working on developing and integrating digital payment platforms that can cater to a wide range of sectors, including retail, hospitality, transportation, and more. The introduction of UPI as part of this vision provides a seamless digital payment solution for both businesses and consumers.
It was a privilege to have His Excellency Satish Kumar Sivan, Consul General of India, Dubai, express his enthusiasm about the increasing penetration of UPI into the UAE. “Indian diaspora and Indian tourist travel experience to the UAE will never remain the same again following the full integration of UPI with the UAE’s digital payment infrastructure. I am happy to note that NIPL is taking aggressive initiatives to deliver a seamless Indian clientele experience through cooperation with merchant entities, payment solution partners, and banks in the UAE.”
A Growing Network of Partners and Collaborations
In the last couple of years, NIPL has established a solid base for UPI in the UAE by forming alliances with major financial institutions and payment system providers. Key alliances include alliances with NeoPay (Mashreq), Network International, and Magnati, which have facilitated UPI QR-based transactions over a fast-growing merchant network.
Dubai Duty-Free and Lulu Hypermarket, flagship retail stores, have already onboarded UPI payment systems, enabling Indian consumers to directly make payments through their Indian bank accounts. Such a partnership reflects the increasing uptake of UPI by the UAE and shows the platform’s ability to further simplify cross-border transactions, enabling wider convenience for both businesses and consumers.
Ritesh Shukla, MD & CEO, NPCI International, shared his pride about the contributions of the company to speeding up UPI adoption in the UAE. “We are delighted to speed up the adoption of UPI in the UAE, a feat that not only delivers unprecedented convenience to millions of Indian visitors but fortifies the digital connection between our two economies as well. By facilitating seamless, secure, and real-time transactions, we are empowering consumers and merchants alike. Our foray into the UAE marks new benchmarks for cross-border financial interconnectedness and complements the UAE’s mission of a cashless economy.”
Way Forward: Expansion of UPI in Strategic Areas
As part of the next phase, NPCI International is actively engaging with the regulators, acquirers, and stakeholders of the industry in the UAE to promote UPI adoption among the broad-based, high-frequency segments such as retail, hospitality, entertainment, transportation, and core services. Through a sector-specific strategy, UPI can realize its full potential across various segments, enabling seamless payment transactions for the benefit of users and optimizing business operations.
One of the key features of UPI is its support for real-time payments in Indian rupees, which is beneficial for both consumers and merchants. The platform also provides transparent exchange rates, enabling businesses to offer competitive pricing and enhancing customer satisfaction. Additionally, UPI incorporates safeguards like two-factor authentication, transaction limits, and international usage controls, ensuring that transactions are secure and compliant with global standards.
A Promising Future for Digital Payments in UAE and Beyond
The payment system of the UAE is experiencing a transformation, and NPCI International has a role to play in shaping the transformation. NPCI International’s endeavors to promote the adoption of UPI in the UAE are a reflection of the growing trust in the payment infrastructure of India and its compatibility with the international market. By developing a seamless, secure, and cross-border payment system, NIPL seeks to strengthen collaborations and usher in the age of digital transformation. With increasing adoption of UPI in the UAE, it will have a profound impact in terms of payment convenience for both UAE-based businesses as well as Indian visitors. India-UAE cooperation is paving the way for a new age of financial digital connectivity that will positively impact millions of people and enterprises across the border.
(Source: NPCI International, Government of India, Government of UAE)
Travel Guides & Articles
Find Sunflowers In Full Bloom At These Places In India This Month – Travel and Leisure Asia
Find Sunflowers In Full Bloom At These Places In India This Month Travel and Leisure Asia
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Travel Guides & Articles
Wego India Innovates with Technology to Streamline Travel Search, Address Trends, and Drive Post-Pandemic Growth
Friday, July 11, 2025
Wego India, a prominent metasearch engine in the travel industry, is revolutionizing the way Indian travelers plan and book their journeys by leveraging cutting-edge technology. According to Bernard Corraya, General Manager of Wego India, the company’s focus on technology and customer experience has been pivotal in enhancing travel search and expanding options for Indian users.
In an exclusive interview with TTW, Bernard Corraya, GM of Wego India, discussed the company’s innovative approach to revolutionizing the travel experience for Indian users. He highlighted Wego India’s integration of real-time APIs, offering seamless flight, hotel, and train bookings. The platform now features flexible fares, multi-carrier itineraries, and a growing focus on experiential accommodations. Corraya also emphasized Wego’s efforts to deliver personalized travel recommendations using machine learning. As India’s travel industry recovers post-pandemic, Wego is contributing to both domestic and outbound tourism by offering flexible, competitive options and a streamlined travel ecosystem.
Wego’s platform aggregates real-time data from airlines, hotels, rail operators, and OTAs through API integrations, ensuring users have access to the most up-to-date and comprehensive options available. This enables the search for flights, hotels, and trains to be smooth and seamless. A significant addition in early 2024 was the integration of a train-booking service, which directly pulls IRCTC availability, allowing users to search for train tickets alongside flights and hotels. The service is designed to allow users to filter by various preferences, such as class, departure time, and fare type, and even complete payments without leaving the platform. Underpinning this service is a robust infrastructure that ensures that search results are up-to-date, reducing booking friction and improving the user experience for Indian travelers.
Looking ahead to 2025, Wego India has observed key trends in travelers’ preferences. Indian users are increasingly opting for flexible fares, which offer refund and rescheduling options, as well as multi-carrier itineraries for better convenience. Additionally, premium-economy seating is gaining popularity for medium-haul flights as travelers seek more comfort. On the hotel front, there is a growing demand for experiential and long-stay accommodations, particularly in tier-II and tier-III cities. The preference for boutique properties and serviced apartments—combining home-style amenities with hotel services—reflects a shift in how Indian travelers want to experience their stays.
To ensure competitive pricing and a wide array of options, Wego India utilizes a dynamic pricing engine that aggregates fares from multiple sources, including direct airline APIs, global distribution systems, and third-party OTAs. This ensures that Wego India users have access to the most competitive prices, along with the flexibility to explore both standard and exclusive package deals.
The company has also embraced the demand for personalized travel recommendations. Wego employs machine-learning algorithms that analyze a user’s past searches, bookings, and travel preferences to present more tailored options. This creates a more personalized experience, allowing users to discover flights, hotels, and destinations that match their individual needs. Additionally, the homepage features “inspiration modules,” offering curated destination guides based on collective trend data.
As India’s travel industry recovers post-pandemic, Wego India is playing a crucial role in facilitating both outbound and domestic travel. With the rise in domestic tourism and outbound travel, Wego India has integrated self-drive rental services through a partnership with Zoomcar, further enhancing the convenience of travel. The company has also worked to make the booking process contactless, ensuring safety and flexibility for travelers. By aggregating multiple travel services—flights, hotels, trains, and self-drive rentals—into a seamless ecosystem, Wego India is paving the way for future growth in both leisure and business travel.
1. How is Wego India leveraging technology to enhance the travel search experience for Indian users?
Wego India operates a robust metasearch engine that aggregates live inventory from hundreds of airlines, hotels, rail operators and OTAs via real‐time API integrations. In early 2024, Wego introduced an integrated train-booking service—pulling IRCTC availability directly into its app and website—to complement flight and hotel search, allowing users to filter by class, departure time and fare type, then complete payment without leaving the Wego platform.
Under the hood, a combination of low-latency caching, incremental data polling, and predictive algorithms for ticket-confirmation probabilities ensures that search results remain both comprehensive and up-to-date, significantly reducing booking friction for Indian travelers.
2. What trends are you seeing in Indian travelers’ preferences for flights and hotels in 2025?
Users increasingly prioritize refundable or “flex” fares, multi-carrier itineraries and premium-economy seating for greater comfort on medium-haul routes. Meanwhile, hotel searches reflect a clear shift toward experiential and long-stay accommodations: demand for boutique properties in tier-II and tier-III cities is rising, and extended-stay travelers are booking serviced apartments that blend home-style amenities with hotel-class services.
3. How does Wego India ensure competitive pricing and comprehensive options in a highly dynamic market?
Wego’s dynamic pricing engine continuously polls multiple fare sources, direct airline APIs, global distribution systems and third-party OTAs, refreshing rates every few minutes to capture flash sales and limited-time bundles.
By presenting these aggregated deals side-by-side with standard fares and surfacing exclusive package rates, Wego India guarantees that every search surfaces the broadest choice at the most competitive price.
4. Can you share how Wego is addressing the growing demand for personalized travel recommendations in India?
To move beyond generic search results, Wego deploys machine-learning models that analyze each user’s past searches, bookings, trip durations and demographic signals. These algorithms rank flight and hotel options in order of likely affinity considering preferred cabin classes, budget bands and even seasonal travel habits, while “inspiration modules” on the homepage deliver hand-curated destination guides based on collective trend data. The result is a bespoke planning experience: rather than wading through hundreds of options, users are presented with personalized suggestions that align closely with their unique preferences and travel histories.
5. How is Wego India contributing to the recovery and growth of India’s outbound and domestic travel markets post-pandemic?
As India’s travel industry rebounds, with outbound trips climbing sharply throughout the year and domestic tourism leading the recovery, Wego has expanded its rail-booking service to capture intra-India travel demand and partnered with Zoomcar to integrate self-drive rentals directly into its platform.
By aggregating flights, hotels, trains and self-drive vehicles into one seamless ecosystem and by championing contactless booking pathways and flexible cancellation policies. Wego is empowering both leisure and business travellers to plan safe, autonomous journeys across India and beyond.
Travel Guides & Articles
Do not travel to Iran: US issues dire warning as detention, terrorism risks grow
In its starkest advisory, the US State Department has urged American citizens not to travel to Iran “for any reason,” citing an escalating pattern of wrongful detentions, threats to civil aviation, terrorism, and misleading surrogacy services.
The updated Level 4: Do Not Travel advisory comes amid growing tensions and a string of high-profile detentions involving US nationals. “US citizens in Iran face serious dangers,” the department warned. “They have been kidnapped and wrongfully arrested. Some have been held for years on false charges, subjected to psychological torture, and even sentenced to death.”
American citizens — especially dual US-Iranian nationals, journalists, students, and business travelers — are being targeted without warning or evidence of any crime, the government said. The advisory emphasized that “having a US passport or connections to the United States can be reason enough for Iranian authorities to detain someone.”
There are currently no formal diplomatic or consular relations between Washington and Tehran. In the event of arrest or detention, the US cannot directly intervene; instead, the Swiss government acts as the “protecting power” for US interests. However, consular access is often denied, especially to dual nationals.
TERROR THREATS AND AVIATION RISK
The advisory also highlights the increasing danger from violent extremist groups. “ISIS and related groups have taken responsibility for bombings and other attacks in the country. The risk of terrorism and deadly harm to bystanders continues,” it noted.
Due to escalating threats in Iranian airspace, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has banned US flights to, from, or through Iran. The department urged Americans to consult the FAA’s NOTAM and SFAR alerts for updates on civil aviation risks.
Adding to the list of concerns is Iran’s unregulated surrogacy industry, which, according to the advisory, has grossly misrepresented security risks and US citizenship law.
“Iranian surrogacy providers have also been known to misrepresent US citizenship law,” the State Department warned. “If a child born overseas to a surrogate is not genetically or gestationally related to a US citizen parent or their spouse, the child will not automatically acquire US citizenship at birth and will not be able to obtain a US passport to leave Iran.”
The tone of the advisory is unusually grave, urging would-be travellers to prepare for the worst. Among the recommendations:
– Drafting a will
– Leaving DNA samples with a medical provider
– Establishing a proof-of-life protocol
– Sharing sensitive login and personal documents with family
– Ends
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