Nikhil Kamath asks if India’s payment tech marvel will be the country’s next export story

Zerodha’s co-founder and CFO, Nikhil Kamath, shared a post on the social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter) on Unified Payments Interface’s (UPI) growth story, raising a question that drew attention from many users.

“If oil shaped geopolitics, can payments protocols do it too? An India-made standard other countries plug into is soft power by design. Should UPI be an export, not just a success?,” asked Kamath in his post, which included multiple graphics.

UPI has emerged as the world’s largest real-time payment system, surpassing Visa in daily transaction volumes. According to data from the Ministry of Finance, Visa, and Mastercard reports, UPI records around 65 crore transactions daily, compared to 64 crore on Visa and 45 crore on Mastercard.

The Indian payment system achieved in nine years and across just seven countries what Visa and Mastercard have not managed in six decades and over 200 nations. UPI also handles more than 7,500 transactions per second instantly, a scale unmatched by its global peers.

India has become the world’s largest and fastest real-time payments market, driven by the UPI. According to ACI Worldwide, India recorded 129.3 billion real-time payment transactions in 2023, a year-on-year growth of 44.6 per cent. Brazil followed with 37.4 billion transactions, while Thailand, China, and South Korea recorded 20.4 billion, 17.2 billion, and 9.1 billion transactions, respectively.

India now processes more real-time payments than the next ten markets combined, with one in every two global real-time payment transactions taking place in the country.

UPI is now officially accepted in several foreign countries, including Bhutan, France, Mauritius, Nepal, Singapore, Sri Lanka, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar. According to the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), UPI facilitates one in every two digital payments globally. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has recognised UPI as the global benchmark for payment system success, underscoring its growing international reach and influence.

Netizens react

Several users on social media agreed with Kamath’s post, saying that UPI’s potential goes beyond domestic payments. Some pointed out that integrating UPI with blockchain technology could significantly boost cross-border transactions and strengthen India’s financial influence globally. Others noted that digital payment systems like UPI could become a new form of soft power, comparing their global impact to how oil once shaped geopolitics.