India’s technology weapon against the West in the Unified Payment Interface looks set to expand to oversea markets after substantial success in the home domestic market.
In a market case-study conducted by Sheer Analytics and Insights, it was reported that India’s UPI market was worth $60.3 billion in 2021 and is expected to reach $440.3 billion between 2022 and 2032.
The secure interface is used to make instant transactions through a mobile phone. While Western companies like Meta are scrapping their e-wallets due to a downturn in cryptocurrency trends, India is independently rising with the fastest digital payment system which on-boards multiple bank accounts onto a single mobile application.
Meanwhile, French payments solution provider, Lyra Network, has also revealed it is prepared to deploy India’s UPI interface and RuPay cards, securing a breakthrough in the European Union. In February 2022, the NIPL partnered with an established payment solution operator called Gateway Payments Service Pvt Ltdt to implement UPI entry into Nepal.
The West’s hype with Web 3 is also just a mystical idea for a new global internet. UPI sets out to deliver exactly what blockchain technology aims to do in increasing a decentralised approach and open protocol on which other technologies can be built.
On the India Stack website, the project is described as “a set of open APIs and digital public goods that aim to unlock the economic primitives of identity, data, and payments at population scale”. India manages 99 billion transactions with the Unified Payment Interface, driving financial inclusion and transformation across global e-commerce as other countries come onboard.
With over 150 million users monthly, the UPI model of offering free transactions from anyway abroad undercuts the rates of systems from the likes of Mastercard and Visa that charge 3% to 5% of a total transaction.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) predicts that UPI payments will account for 8% of India’s total GDP in 2025.
Appearing at Digital India Week, Prime Minister, Narendra Modi asserted India’s status in leading a digital revolution with instant payment systems, saying: “Today, digital products like UPI are (even) the centre of attraction for developed countries of the world, or those countries which cannot invest in this type of technology. Our digital solutions have the reach, are secure and have democratic values.”
