UPI is accepted in eight countries — Bhutan, Singapore, Qatar, Mauritius, Nepal, the UAE, Sri Lanka and France — allowing Indian travellers to make merchant payments abroad using the platform. Nagaraju said India now accounts for around half of global digital transactions, driven largely by UPI adoption. UPI, operated by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), enables real-time peer-to-peer and merchant transactions. Earlier, at a high-level dialogue in Washington DC, RBI governor Sanjay Malhotra had said plans are underway to widen cross-border merchant payments through UPI-enabled QR codes. Back home, about 20 billion transactions are made using UPI every month.

Source: The Telegraph January 14, 2026 02:37 UTC