India talking to 8 more nations for UPI acceptance: Financial services secy

India is talking to about eight countries, including those in East Asia, to make UPI payments acceptable, Financial Services Secretary M Nagaraju said on Friday.

Unified Payment Interface (UPI) is currently accepted in eight countries -- Bhutan, Singapore, Qatar, Mauritius, Nepal, UAE, Sri Lanka and France. Acceptability of India's digital payment network overseas enables Indian tourists to make UPI payments for transactions abroad.

"We are now talking to about 7-8 countries, including many in East Asia, to have UPI transactions," Nagaraju said at a conference on Harnessing AI and digital public infrastructure for Viksit Bharat.

Nagaraju also said that India is including a track on UPI in some of the trade negotiations with countries.

"Some of the trade negotiations we are doing with some of the countries now, we are trying to have a track on UPI so that the fintech industry which is deeply involved in UPI also have a foot in the financial sector where we have the cost, scale advantage and we want to leverage that advantage to the benefit of the country," Nagaraju said.