The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) handles almost half of the world’s digital transactions, primarily through its Unified Payments Interface (UPI) platform, and its reach continues to expand.
According to India Today, there were just over 20 billion UPI transactions in August alone—far surpassing Brazil’s formidable real-time payments system, Pix, which processed roughly 6 billion monthly transactions last year. Overall, UPI now handles more daily transactions than Visa’s global network and China’s Alipay super app.
A key reason for UPI’s rapid growth—considering the platform was only launched in 2018—is the bold strategy implemented by India’s officials. The platform has secured partnerships with leading payments players such as Google and PayPal, while continuously enhancing its functionalities.
Interoperable and Global
UPI is now accepted in various forms in France, United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Singapore, among other countries. The latest expansion comes through a partnership with Qatar National Bank (QNB), enabling UPI acceptance at point-of-sale terminals operated by QNB-acquired merchants.
This partnership means travelers from India—the second-largest group of foreign tourists to Qatar—can pay with UPI at major tourist attractions and Qatar Duty Free outlets, the first merchant to go live on the platform.
While this expansion will likely ease travel-related issues like currency exchange for travelers, the move represents UPI’s ongoing strategy, with the ultimate goal of creating a truly interoperable global payment network, per Ritesh Shukla.
A Muted Reception
Although real-time payments have taken off in regions like India and Brazil, they have received a more muted reception in the United States. Both RTP and FedNow have made strides since their respective inceptions, but still process only a fraction of UPI’s volume.
One of the main hurdles to broader adoption is that the networks are still largely receive-only, meaning they aren’t fully suited for widescale merchant applications. While in India it is common for users to scan QR codes to purchase everyday items using UPI, the use cases for FedNow and RTP have largely been relegated to business-to-business transactions.
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