New Delhi, January 13 (IANS). India is working to extend its indigenous digital payments system Unified Payments Interface (UPI) to more countries. M Nagaraju, Secretary, Department of Financial Services (DFS) of the Finance Ministry said on Tuesday that special attention is being given to the countries of East Asia in this regard.
Speaking at the Global Inclusive Finance India Summit held in the national capital, Nagaraju said UPI has played an important role in rapidly expanding digital payments in India. Today, about 50 percent of the total digital transactions in the country are done through UPI.
He said that the government now wants to take this successful system to other countries also, so that India’s digital payment system can be recognized across the world.
Currently transactions are being done through UPI in 8 countries. These include Bhutan, Singapore, Qatar, Mauritius, Nepal, United Arab Emirates, Sri Lanka and France.
Due to the facility of UPI abroad, Indian tourists can make digital payments without cash or international cards, which provides them a lot of convenience.
M Nagaraju said that India has already launched UPI in some countries and is now trying to take it further. He said that at present the special focus of the government is on the countries of East Asia, so that UPI can be made a global payment platform.
He told that the use of UPI has increased very rapidly in India. More than 21 billion transactions took place through UPI in December 2025 alone.
According to Nagaraju, a major reason for the rapid growth of digital payments is the bank accounts opened under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana. The average amount of money kept by people in these accounts is also gradually increasing.
UPI is operated by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which handles the country’s retail payment and settlement systems.
NPCI is an initiative supported by the Reserve Bank of India and the Indian Banks’ Association.
Apart from digital payments, Nagaraju also stressed the need to promote micro enterprises in the country. He said that there are crores of small enterprises in the country, but very few enterprises reach the medium or large level.
He further said that only when micro enterprises get better access to the market, means to increase production, technology and modern machines, they will be able to grow and become big enterprises.
–IANS
DBP/ABM
