India is trying to expand the global reach of its homegrown digital payment system UPI to a larger number of countries, especially in East Asia, Union Financial Services Secretary M Nagaraju said on Tuesday.
Unified Payment Interface (UPI) is currently accepted in eight countries, including Bhutan, Singapore, Qatar, Mauritius, Nepal, the UAE, Sri Lanka and France. The acceptability of India's digital payment network overseas enables Indian tourists to make UPI payments for transactions abroad.
Speaking at the Global Inclusive Finance India Summit here, Nagaraju said India is about 50 per cent in terms of digital transactions, thanks to UPI. "Now we have expanded to some countries. We are trying to expand to a large number of countries. We are especially focussing on East Asia now," he said.
The secretary said UPI transactions crossed more than 21 billion in December 2025, and the success of UPI and digital transactions could also be attributed to manifold growth in the PM Jan Dhan Yojana accounts, along with the increase in average balance in these accounts.
The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) runs the UPI used for real-time payments between peers or at merchants' end while making purchases. An initiative of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Indian Banks' Association, NPCI is an umbrella organisation for operating retail payments and settlement systems in India.
Nagaraju emphasised the need for scaling up of small micro-units into medium enterprises. "The graduation of micro-units into medium and large enterprises is actually not happening in the country, despite having a few crores of units in the country. I think that will happen only when the micro-enterprises get a lot of support, market access and also productivity gains, both through the echnology as well as hardware," he said.
Also read: UPI accepted in Japan following NIPL pact with NTT DATA Japan
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