The Maldives Monetary Authority (MMA) has stated the testing phase in linking Maldives’ Instant Payment System (Favara) and India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) will begin this month.
UPI is the most common and the official digital payment system for transactions in India. UPI is used by the biggest businesses, taxis and road-side vegetable shops for transactions.
The agreement linking Favara and UPI was signed in July 2025. The linking of both systems will establish a system in allowing people from both countries to send funds between each other with ease, along with a safe, affordable and instant payment transaction system.
MMA said that they are working on starting the testing phase in linking the two systems, with the introduction of the services being split into two stages.
The first stage is setting up a system where instant transactions can take place between people in Maldives and India. The second stage is facilitating a path to ease of payment from people for merchant payments via QR codes.
Maldivian banks have said that the linking of the two systems will see a slight ease in the demand for foreign currencies.