India plans to take UPI to more countries, focus on East Asia

New Delhi: India is working to widen the international footprint of its indigenous digital payments platform, UPI, with a special focus on East Asian countries, Financial Services Secretary M Nagaraju said on Tuesday.

At present, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is operational in eight countries- Bhutan, Singapore, Qatar, Mauritius, Nepal, the UAE, Sri Lanka and France- allowing Indian travellers to make seamless digital payments abroad using UPI.

Addressing the Global Inclusive Finance India Summit, Nagaraju said digital transactions now account for about 50 per cent of all payments in the country, largely driven by the rapid adoption of UPI.

"Now we have expanded to some countries. We are trying to expand. To a large number of countries, especially we are focussing in East Asia now," he said.

Nagaraju said UPI transactions crossed 21 billion in December 2025, and the success of UPI and digital transactions could also be attributed to the manifold growth in PM Jan Dhan Yojana accounts, along with increases in average balances in these accounts.

National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) runs the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) used for real-time payments between peers or at merchants' end while making purchases.

Nagaraju emphasised the need to scale up 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 technology as well as hardware," he said.