Post UPI, Indian payment players look to foreign shores for growth

With thin margins in the UPI era, Indian fintechs are looking overseas, betting on cross-border payments, CBDCs, and new digital rails for sustainable growth

As Indian fintech companies contend with thin margins in the domestic payment market dominated by the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), executives Arif Khan, chief innovation officer at Razorpay; Harsh Gupta, chief revenue officer at Cashfree Payments; Sanjay Tripathy, cofounder and chief executive officer of BriskPe; and Rahul Jain, chief financial officer at NTT Data Payment Services, speak to Ajinkya Kawale at the Business Standard BFSI Insight Summit 2025 about how global expansion is becoming central to long-term growth strategies. Edited excerpts:

 

Indian payment firms are increasingly looking overseas in the post-UPI era. What is driving this push, and what are the key challenges in scaling cross-border payments globally? 

ARIF KHAN: In India, the payments ecosystem has evolved around extremely low pricing, largely because of UPI. Over time, we have become comfortable operating in an environment where margins are thin, and scale compensates for pricing. When Indian fintechs evaluate overseas markets, even slightly higher margins appear attractive compared to what is possible domestically, especially given the growing cost of compliance and innovation. At the same time, global expansion is not just about chasing better economics. Cross-border payments introduce layers of complexity that do not exist in a single-market system like UPI. Risk management, regulatory alignment, and settlement infrastructure vary significantly across regions, and that fundamentally changes how payment businesses have to be built and operated. 

HARSH GUPTA: In India, UPI operates at almost no cost, which makes monetisation difficult, even though payment companies continue to incur expenses related to innovation and compliance. Profitability, therefore, remains a challenge, and firms naturally start exploring markets where payments can be monetised more effectively. The cost of moving money differs widely depending on local regulations, trade agreements, and settlement mechanisms. Unless there are clear rules and consistent frameworks between countries, payments remain expensive and unpredictable. 

SANJAY TRIPATHY: Despite the growth in international commerce, fintech participation in India’s cross-border payments remains very limited. Less than 5 per cent of cross-border transactions from India are currently handled by fintechs, which is among the lowest levels globally. That gap highlights how early this opportunity still is for Indian players. Every country has different requirements depending on the instrument, transaction type, and counterparty. Navigating these variations becomes a challenge when scaling cross-border payment businesses. 

RAHUL JAIN: Indian fintechs are entering global markets at a time when payment infrastructure is evolving. Very few countries have taken the kind of lead India has in deploying a central bank digital currency model (CBDC). From that standpoint, CBDCs are an important development.

 

Legacy systems like SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications) continue to dominate global payments. How do fintechs view these systems, and what alternatives are emerging? 

KHAN: SWIFT has long been a widely used solution for cross-border payments, but it is an expensive system and not a standard that fintechs had any role in setting. As a result, it was not built with fintech economics in mind. From the banking ecosystem’s perspective, the system works well because there is a passback mechanism embedded in it. From a fintech point of view, however, there is no such passback or incentive structure. That asymmetry makes SWIFT a significant challenge for payment companies, particularly when margins are already under pressure. While it continues to be the dominant global standard, operating within that framework remains difficult for fintechs trying to scale cross-border payments efficiently. 

GUPTA: When fintechs assess cross-border payment opportunities, the first set of issues that come into focus are risk, compliance, taxation, speed, and cost. These factors become even more critical as companies move beyond domestic markets. A key challenge is that the cost of moving money varies significantly from one country to another. In the absence of well-defined trade agreements and clear regulatory frameworks between markets, cross-border payments tend to remain inconsistent in terms of pricing and execution. This lack of uniformity makes it difficult for fintechs to deliver predictable outcomes for customers and to build scalable, profitable cross-border payment businesses. 

TRIPATHY: From a regulatory standpoint, what India is currently comfortable with is the CBDC route, which is clearly seen as the way forward. Globally, however, several regulators, including those in the US, and Singapore have begun to acknowledge stablecoins because they offer speed and efficiency, especially by bypassing traditional networks like SWIFT and enabling wallet-to-wallet transfers. 

From a capability perspective, the ecosystem is already ready. We operate multi-currency wallets that can handle fiat currencies as well as stablecoins. The real challenge lies in compliance and conversion. Systems like SWIFT provide standardised information flows and regulatory visibility. Stablecoins will need to offer similar levels of compliance data and reliable on-ramps and off-ramps into fiat. 

JAIN: From a stablecoin perspective, India’s ecosystem is still not ready for adoption from a regulatory standpoint. We are currently focused on our own CBDC, which we are trying to deploy and integrate in a phased manner. Globally, most countries — roughly 80 per cent — are exploring their own CBDCs, and a few, including India, have already taken significant steps in deploying this model. 

While stablecoins are becoming increasingly popular internationally, especially for real-time payments, their use in trade within India remains limited. Over time, whether through CBDCs or other innovations, we expect digital rails to make cross-border payments faster, more transparent, and cost-efficient, but for now, the practical adoption of stablecoins for trade in India is still a way off.

 

With UPI expanding internationally and CBDCs gaining attention, how do you see the future of cross-border payments for Indian players? 

KHAN: CBDCs have significant potential, particularly for targeted applications like government transfers, and reaching underserved populations in Tier-III cities. However, the underlying distributed architecture poses challenges in an ecosystem that is otherwise highly centralised. 

GUPTA: Today, the cost of moving funds is highly inconsistent across countries, and without well-defined trade agreements and clear regulations, much of this remains ambiguous. Investing outside India isn’t seamless the way UPI is here. Until regulatory, taxation, and compliance issues are addressed and processes streamlined, cross-border payments won’t scale to match the efficiency we see in domestic transactions. 

TRIPATHY: Today, a significant portion of value is lost to friction and intermediaries. Even a reduction of a few percentage points in transaction costs can translate into substantial savings at a global trade level. From a broader ecosystem perspective, making cross-border payments faster and cheaper is not just a technology upgrade, it is very much in the country’s economic interest. 

Jain: From a regulatory standpoint, India is still some distance away from adopting stablecoins. While the finance minister has spoken about the adoption of stablecoins in one of her speeches, as a country, I think it is still far off for us to adopt them, mainly because stablecoins are not backed by the central bank.