India PM Modi seeks global expansion for retail payment platform

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi stood before the Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai on September 8 and made his ambitions for the country’s Unified Payments Interface clear: eleven countries down, a lot more to go. UPI, the real-time payment system managed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), processed 24.51 billion transactions worth roughly $314 billion in August 2026 alone. Modi wants to take that infrastructure global, targeting markets where large Indian communities live and where trade volumes justify the plumbing. The numbers behind the push UPI isn’t just India’s most popular payment method. It handled approximately 49% of global real-time payment volume as of 2024, making it the single largest retail fast-payment system on the planet by transaction count. The platform currently operates in 11 countries: Singapore, the UAE, France, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Qatar, Cambodia, Greece, and the Maldives. Greece and the Maldives are the newest additions to that list. NPCI CEO Dilip Asbe said in August 2026 that the organization aims to connect with an additional 15 to 20 markets over the next decade. The driving economic logic is remittances. India rec...