Paris struggles with UPI and QR code payments as Europe hesitates on digital payment adoption

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” says the information desk official at the Eiffel Tower, the iconic engineering marvel, when asked how to buy a ticket using UPI or the QR-code mode of payment.

The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) was introduced in Paris in February this year with an aim to allow Indians to buy tickets to visit the iconic tower without having to worry about currency exchange rates or carrying large amounts of foreign currency.

The Eiffel Tower was the first merchant to offer UPI payments in France, and the service was planned to be extended to other merchants in the tourism and retail space across the country and Europe.

However, the ticket counters at one of the most significant landmarks in Paris, have neither arrangements nor information about whether a Quick Response (QR) code is even an option to buy a ticket.

Hisham Mohammed, who works as a guide at the Eiffel Tower, was pretty excited when he learned that such an option was being made for the Indians.

“Well, it was only in the news. No one knows here about the UPI option,” Hisham, who hails from Hyderabad, told PTI as he waited for his next guided tour of the monument.

“I came running the next day after the announcement but found nothing here. No one had a clue then and no one knows even now.

“We were glad to hear that this was happening. UPI is convenient, but it was all in the news, nothing on the ground,” he said.

The official website for online ticket booking offers credit and debit cards as options for payment. The guided summit tour through the elevator is priced at Euro 64.

With a record 14.04 billion transactions in India in the month of May – up from 920 million in 2017-18 – UPI’s first full of operations, UPI was gone global and is now available across seven countries – UAE, Nepal, Singapore, Bhutan, Mauritius, Sri Lanka and Thailand where Indian can transact at almost 3 million merchant establishments.

The numbers at Paris currently are insignificant compared to the more than 250 million local QR code points.