By Shishir Prashant 
PrashantNews
A decade ago, a street vendor in Mumbai might have struggled to open a bank account because he had no formal address or the required documents. Today, that vendor can accept payments on a mobile phone within seconds, without handling cash. The transformation has caught the attention of world leaders and is now extending beyond India’s borders.
India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which began as a domestic digital payment system in 2016, is now operational in 11 foreign countries, including Greece and the Maldives, according to a government report. The expansion reflects India’s growing ambitions to make its real-time payment technology available internationally.
French President Emmanuel Macron had offered a striking endorsement of this transformation at the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi on February 19 this year. Recalling the difficulties faced by a street vendor in Mumbai a decade ago, he said the same vendor could now accept instant payments through a mobile phone.
“That is not just a tech story, that is a civilization story,” Macron said, adding that India had built something no other country had achieved at the same scale — a digital identity system for 1.4 billion people. He also highlighted a payment system processing billions of transactions every month.
Macron’s remarks echoed an experience he had during an earlier visit to India. In 2024, Prime Minister Narendra Modi demonstrated UPI to the French president while the two leaders had tea at a shop near Jaipur’s Hawa Mahal.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez also experienced the system firsthand during his India visit in October 2024, using UPI to buy a Ganesh statue at a shop in Mumbai.
These encounters have helped showcase a technology that has become part of everyday life for millions of Indians — from street vendors and small shopkeepers to large businesses and government agencies.
Developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), UPI was launched on a pilot basis in April 2016 with 21 member banks and opened to the public later that year. The launch of the BHIM app in December 2016 helped popularise direct bank-to-bank payments through mobile phones.
Since then, the platform has expanded well beyond basic money transfers. UPI 2.0, introduced in 2018, added features including invoice viewing, mandates and overdraft account linking. UPI AutoPay subsequently enabled recurring payments for subscriptions, insurance premiums, utility bills and equated monthly instalments.
Other innovations widened access further. UPI 123PAY brought digital payments to feature-phone users, while UPI Lite simplified low-value transactions. Credit cards linked to UPI, Credit Line on UPI and UPI Circle have added new payment options and broadened the system’s potential uses.
In July 2026, UPI processed approximately 2,365.8 crore transactions worth ₹29.87 lakh crore, with 741 banks connected to the platform, according to the government report.
Annual transaction volume rose from just two crore in the financial year 2016-17 to more than 24,162 crore in 2025-26. The report put annual transaction value at around ₹314 lakh crore in 2025-26, compared with ₹0.07 lakh crore in the first year of operations.
UPI’s share of India’s digital payment ecosystem has also grown substantially. The government said the platform accounted for 84 per cent of India’s digital payment volume in 2025-26. The International Monetary Fund has also recognised India’s leading role in real-time payments, with UPI accounting for approximately 49 per cent of global real-time payment transaction volume in 2025, according to the government factsheet.
UPI’s international expansion has taken different forms. In some countries, it enables users to make payments at participating merchants; in others, links between payment systems support cross-border transfers.
The government report lists Bhutan, Nepal, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, France, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Qatar, Cambodia, Greece and the Maldives among the 11 countries where UPI is live for acceptance and/or cross-border remittances.
Greece became part of the network for cross-border remittances in June 2026, while the connection between India’s UPI and the Maldives’ instant payment system, Favara, went live on July 30. Cambodia also joined the expanding network in June.
The expansion offers opportunities for Indian travellers, merchants and businesses, although the services available differ by country and participating payment provider.
UPI’s journey from a pilot involving 21 banks to a system processing tens of billions of transactions annually illustrates the rapid growth of India’s digital public infrastructure. Its next challenge will be to deepen international interoperability, expand merchant acceptance and ensure that convenience is matched by reliability and security.
For now, the image of a small Mumbai vendor accepting a payment with a phone captures the transformation most vividly. What began as an effort to make digital transactions easier at home has become a technology India is increasingly taking to the world.