NEW DELHI (Diya TV) — India’s Unified Payments Interface plans to expand beyond the country by using its large overseas diaspora as a key driver. The National Payments Corporation of India, which operates UPI, wants the platform to become a trusted option for cross-border payments.
NPCI Chief Executive Officer Dilip Asbe said the organization could target 15 to 20 overseas markets over the next decade. He said the plan would help India build greater independence in international payments.
“Is it possible to get 15-20 markets in the next 10 years’ time?” Asbe said. He described the goal as a long-term approach to entering global markets.
For now, NPCI is in discussions with Japan, Malaysia and Bahrain, among other countries. However, governments and central banks in those markets will make the final decisions. Regulations, economic interests and geopolitical issues could affect those plans.
UPI already operates in nine countries. These include Singapore, France and the United Arab Emirates. The payment system also has links with Nepal and Greece for certain remittance services.
The expansion comes as international money transfers remain important to India. The country has about 35 million people living abroad, according to NPCI. Those overseas Indians sent more than $155 billion to India during the fiscal year that ended in March.
That figure made India the world’s largest recipient of remittances. As a result, NPCI sees the diaspora as a natural starting point for international UPI expansion.
“The diaspora is going to increase, travel is going to increase, the trade is going to increase,” Asbe said.
UPI has already changed how people make payments in India. The system lets users send money directly between bank accounts through mobile phones. It often removes the need for cards or traditional payment networks.
Apps such as Google Pay and PhonePe rely on UPI for payments in India. Meanwhile, Apple Pay has not yet entered the country’s domestic payments market.
According to the International Monetary Fund, UPI ranks as the world’s largest real-time payment system by transaction volume. Its success at home has encouraged NPCI to explore similar connections with payment systems in other countries.
NPCI also wants to explore new technology. Asbe said the organization is studying agentic artificial intelligence for payments through services such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Alphabet’s Gemini. Such technology could eventually help users make payments through digital assistants.
However, NPCI’s international plans come as the business model for UPI changes in India. India’s lower house of Parliament recently approved legislation that allows banks and other payment providers to charge fees on UPI transactions.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said NPCI has not yet decided whether it will introduce such charges. The organization did not comment on the issue.
NPCI was established by the Reserve Bank of India and Indian banks. It operates much of the country’s retail payments infrastructure. Besides UPI, it also runs RuPay, India’s domestic card network.
NPCI now wants to share its payment technology with other developing countries. It has offered the technology as a public good to nations such as Namibia, Peru and Trinidad and Tobago.
The global push could give India a larger role in digital payments. At the same time, success will depend on local regulations and cooperation with foreign governments.
