India’s digital public infrastructure (DPI) began as a domestic solution to domestic challenges. A decade on, its most ambitious experiment is unfolding beyond India’s borders. UPI processed 24.51 billion transactions worth ₹29.82 lakh crore in August 2026, across 752 participating banks. But its real significance is not scale alone. By separating the payment rail from consumer-facing applications and enabling interoperability across banks and platforms, UPI created a model that other countries are now examining. The question is whether India can export not merely UPI, but the institutional architecture that made it possible.
The IMF’s research offers an important explanation for UPI’s adoption. Its analysis of granular transaction data found that interoperability itself contributed to the growth of digital payments, because users could choose applications without sacrificing access to the wider network. The implication extends beyond India: a country seeking digital-payment adoption may gain more from connecting competing providers than from simply creating another closed wallet.
That is the part of the Indian experience with the greatest export potential.
India is now actively trying to export not just UPI acceptance but the institutional lessons surrounding digital public infrastructure. In July, the government signed MoUs with 24 countries for cooperation on India Stack and other population-scale digital systems, including knowledge exchange, feasibility assessments and implementation support. Kenya, for instance, has progressed towards implementing a DigiLocker-based system, while Cuba has begun work on a foundational DigiLocker solution. Payments are moving faster.
UPI is already operational for merchant payments or cross-border transfers in a growing group of countries, including Singapore, the UAE, France, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Qatar and Cambodia. Recent additions include Greece for India-Greece remittances and the Maldives through linkage with its Favara instant-payment system. UPI now operates in 11 countries.
{{/usCountry}}UPI is already operational for merchant payments or cross-border transfers in a growing group of countries, including Singapore, the UAE, France, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Qatar and Cambodia. Recent additions include Greece for India-Greece remittances and the Maldives through linkage with its Favara instant-payment system. UPI now operates in 11 countries.
{{/usCountry}}This expansion, however, should not be mistaken for the emergence of a global UPI network.
In most cases, India is connecting UPI to a country's existing payment infrastructure rather than replacing it. That distinction is crucial. Payments are embedded in national banking systems, financial regulations, consumer-protection rules, currencies and settlement arrangements. An Indian payment interface cannot simply be transplanted into another jurisdiction like software.
Indeed, the World Bank's global DPI programme points to the scale of the challenge. Only 8% of lower-middle-income countries and 16% of upper-middle-income countries currently have fast, inclusive payment systems, while 2.9 billion people still lack digital IDs suitable for online transactions. The opportunity is enormous, but so are the institutional and structural gaps that precede a functioning payment network.
India's experience demonstrates that payment infrastructure works best when several foundations develop together. UPI did not emerge in isolation. It rests on India's banking system, Aadhaar-linked identity infrastructure, existing real-time payment capabilities, widespread mobile connectivity, regulatory intervention and a large network of banks and fintech companies. The National Payments Corporation of India provided the common rail, while private and public institutions competed to build the user experience.
This division between public infrastructure and private innovation may be India's most important exportable idea. The Bank for International Settlements has described India's approach as one in which foundational infrastructure is built and operated as public infrastructure while private firms use it to develop competing services. Such an arrangement can reduce the incentive for private firms to build closed networks that become difficult for competitors to enter. But there is a less comfortable side to the export proposition.
A payment rail that is effectively free at the point of use is not necessarily financially sustainable everywhere. India's own model is entering a new phase. From October 15, 2026, a 0.4% merchant discount rate will apply to specified UPI merchant transactions above ₹2,000, with exemptions and lower rates for certain categories. Person-to-person payments remain free. The change reflects a broader question that India cannot avoid: Who ultimately pays for a payment system whose social value may be much larger than the revenue it directly generates?
That question becomes more difficult abroad. Countries adopting or linking to UPI will have their own banks, payment companies, regulators and commercial incentives. They may welcome Indian technology while resisting dependence on an Indian-controlled network. Sovereignty therefore matters as much as technology.
There are also questions of resilience, privacy, fraud and consumer protection. At India's scale, even a tiny failure rate can affect millions of transactions. The more countries connect to a common architecture, the greater the consequences of operational or cyber disruptions. International adoption therefore requires not only technical interoperability but compatible standards for data protection, liability, dispute resolution and cybersecurity.
The strongest case for India as a global DPI exporter is consequently not that every country should copy UPI. Countries can borrow its underlying principles: Open standards, interoperability, public digital rails, competition at the application layer and regulation that prevents infrastructure from becoming a private bottleneck.
The World Bank has already identified fast, interoperable payments as one of the central building blocks of modern DPI, while the IMF's research provides empirical evidence that interoperability can accelerate adoption.
India, therefore, faces a choice in how it presents its digital success to the world. It can market UPI as an Indian technology product, seeking wider overseas adoption. Or it can make the more ambitious proposition: That the architecture behind UPI offers a template for building national payment systems that remain interoperable, competitive and publicly accessible.
The second proposition is harder. It requires patience, local adaptation and an acceptance that successful export may mean countries adopting Indian design principles without adopting institutions wholesale. That may ultimately be the real test of India's DPI. A technology becomes genuine global infrastructure not when other countries use it because it is Indian, but when they can adapt its underlying principles to solve their own problems. UPI has already proved that a payment network can operate at extraordinary scale. The next experiment is whether the ideas that made it work can travel without the circumstances that created them.
(The views expressed are personal)
This article is authored by Amal Chandra, Statement Fellow and coordinator, South Asia, Students For Liberty.