India’s UPI operator seeks bigger global footprint: report

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is aiming to expand the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) to as many as 15 to 20 overseas markets over the next decade, using countries with large Indian communities as an initial route into cross-border payments.

NPCI Chief Executive Dilip Asbe outlined the target in an interview with Bloomberg published on Monday, 10 August.

Asbe named Japan, Malaysia and Bahrain among the markets where expansion is being pursued, while stressing that implementation ultimately depends on governments and central banks because cross-border payment links carry regulatory and geopolitical implications.

The new element is the scale and timeframe of NPCI’s ambition rather than the focus on the Indian diaspora itself.

NPCI International Payments Ltd, the corporation’s overseas arm, has been pursuing that strategy for several years.

In 2023, NIPL Chief Executive Ritesh Shukla said the company would prioritize countries important to Indian travelers or those with large Indian populations, specifically identifying the Middle East and North America as important markets.

NIPL signed an agreement with NTT DATA Japan in October 2025 to work toward UPI acceptance at merchant locations in Japan.

In February, it signed an agreement with Malaysia’s national payments network, PayNet, for a phased linkage between UPI and DuitNow QR.

The first stage is intended to allow Indian travelers to use UPI at Malaysian merchants, with reciprocal payments for Malaysian visitors to India planned later.

In Bahrain, NIPL and BENEFIT signed an agreement last year to connect UPI with the country’s Electronic Fund Transfer System for real-time cross-border remittances.
Bahrain’s central bank said the arrangement was being developed under the supervision of the Central Bank of Bahrain and the Reserve Bank of India.

India’s overseas population gives NPCI a substantial existing customer base around which to build those connections. Ministry of external affairs data put the number of overseas Indians at more than 35 million as of January, spread across major economies in North America, Europe, the Gulf and Asia.

UPI already has the domestic scale to support a broader international push. The International Monetary Fund describes it as the world’s largest real-time payment system by transaction volume.

India’s finance ministry said UPI processed 23.66 billion transactions in July alone and was live in 11 foreign countries, although the services available differ between markets.

NPCI’s international strategy has also moved beyond simply enabling Indians to scan UPI codes while traveling.

NIPL is working with foreign governments and central banks to connect UPI with their domestic instant-payment systems, while separately helping some countries build sovereign real-time payment infrastructure modeled on the Indian system.

Its projects include UPI-style payment platforms in Peru, Namibia and Trinidad and Tobago.

Cambodia became another merchant-acceptance market in June after NIPL and ACLEDA Bank linked UPI-powered apps with Cambodia’s KHQR national QR network. The first phase allows Indian visitors to pay Cambodian merchants, with a two-way payment corridor planned later.

The international push also has a strategic dimension. Asbe told Bloomberg that countries increasingly want greater control over critical payment infrastructure, pointing to the use of financial networks and sanctions during geopolitical conflicts as evidence of the risks of excessive dependence on external systems.

At home, meanwhile, India is considering how to make the UPI ecosystem financially sustainable as transaction volumes continue to rise.

The finance ministry said on Saturday that payments would remain free for consumers and all person-to-person transactions would continue without charges. Any future merchant discount rate would apply only to a limited category of merchant transactions above a threshold and would be decided under a proposed new framework.

NPCI is also looking beyond conventional payment interfaces. Asbe said the corporation is exploring whether agentic artificial intelligence could enable payments through platforms such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. No partnership or launch timetable was announced.