New Delhi: India is working to expand the global reach of its homegrown digital payment system, Unified Payments Interface (UPI), to more countries, with a special focus on East Asia, Financial Services Secretary M Nagaraju said on Tuesday.
Speaking at the Global Inclusive Finance India Summit here, Nagaraju said UPI has played a key role in driving India’s digital payments growth and now accounts for nearly 50 per cent of all digital transactions in the country.
He added that the government is keen to take this success story to more international markets.
At present, UPI is accepted in eight countries — Bhutan, Singapore, Qatar, Mauritius, Nepal, the UAE, Sri Lanka and France.
The overseas acceptance of UPI allows Indian tourists to make digital payments abroad without the need for cash or international cards.
“We have already expanded to some countries and are trying to expand further. We are now focusing especially on East Asia,” Nagaraju said — highlighting the government’s push to make UPI a globally accepted payment platform.
He also noted the massive scale achieved by UPI in India, with transactions crossing more than 21 billion in December 2025 alone.
According to him, the rapid adoption of digital payments has been supported by the strong growth of bank accounts under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, along with a steady rise in the average balance maintained in these accounts.
UPI is operated by the National Payments Corporation of India, which manages the country’s retail payments and settlement systems.
NPCI is an initiative backed by the Reserve Bank of India and the Indian Banks’ Association.
Apart from digital payments, Nagaraju also stressed the need to support the growth of micro-enterprises in the country.
He said that despite the presence of crores of micro-units, their transition into medium and large enterprises has been limited.
He added that this shift would happen only when micro-enterprises receive better support in terms of market access, productivity improvements and the use of technology and modern hardware.
(IANS)
