Google Pay will collaborate with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to elevate India’s revolutionary mobile-based payments system, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), to an international level.

What Happened? The partnership between Google India Digital Services and NPCI aims to ease international payments for Indian travellers and to help establish UPI-like digital payment frameworks in other countries. This move aligns with NPCI’s goal to strengthen India’s stature in the global digital payment arena and simplify remittances by reducing reliance on traditional money transfer methods.

“UPI has demonstrated to the world the change that happens in economies with the introduction of interoperable, population-scale digital infrastructure and each economy that joins such networks will create an impact beyond the sum of parts. We are very excited about the scope of this collaboration," says Ritesh Shukla, CEO – NIPL.

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UPI’s going global: The Indian government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has been actively pushing for UPI’s global expansion. In a significant step, India and Singapore integrated their systems last year, facilitating real-time money transfers. The team is exploring further collaborations with countries like Sri Lanka and the United Arab Emirates.

In November alone, the UPI platform processed transactions worth ₹17.4 lakh crore (approximately $209 billion), as per the latest data from India’s central bank. This partnership with Google Pay is expected to further propel UPI’s reach and influence in the global digital payments landscape.

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