Come 2025 and you may be able to use UPI in 6 more countries in the world

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NPCI International Payments (NIPL), the body responsible for deploying NPCI’s homegrown payment products globally, is in the process of expanding the reach of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) to four to six additional countries in 2025, up from the current seven, according to a senior official.

 

NIPL, the payments body, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), is looking to go live with UPI in geographies relevant to Indian tourists, such as Qatar, Thailand, and the broader Southeast Asian region.

 

“While NPCI in India works at a breakneck speed, we have partners outside India who have their own way of completing projects. We are hopeful of going live in 3–4 more countries (next year), and if projects are completed on time, six countries is what we are looking at,” said Ritesh Shukla, CEO, NIPL.

 

Shukla was speaking at a panel discussion hosted by the Moneycontrol Fintech Conclave.

 

At present, UPI payments are accepted in seven countries, including Bhutan, Mauritius, Nepal, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and France. Twenty apps, including third-party application providers such as BHIM, PhonePe, Paytm, and Google Pay, support such international transactions.

 

“We are now looking at building traction in the markets where we have gone live. This means creating awareness on both sides—merchants and peers. We are working with banks in India to educate customers on using UPI internationally, working with fintechs to create notifications as users land in foreign markets, and we are live in six airports at international terminals,” he added.

 

Apart from taking UPI live to other countries, the international payments body has partnered with countries such as Peru, Namibia, and Trinidad and Tobago to develop payment systems similar to India's real-time payment system.

 

“On an infrastructure level, we are helping other countries become sovereign in their domestic payment needs. Once these systems are ready and thriving, we will look to connect them with India to serve cross-border flows on a bilateral basis between two markets,” Shukla added.

 

The organisation is working with countries such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Mauritius to help them create a card scheme similar to RuPay.

 

NIPL is targeting foreign use cases such as peer-to-peer (P2P) and peer-to-merchant (P2M) transactions that are similar to UPI in India. For P2P transactions, NIPL works on a two-pronged strategy that includes bilateral and multilateral efforts.

 

“For instance, in bilateral efforts, we have connected UPI in India with PayNow in Singapore. We are in discussions with Aani, the UAE’s fast payment system similar to UPI. We are ready with another country, whose launch will happen in a month or so,” Shukla said.

 

The multilateral part includes programmes such as Project Nexus, an initiative under the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).

 

The BIS Innovation Hub is working with the central banks of India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand to implement the project to connect instant payment systems (IPS) of different countries to each other.