India-Indonesia UPI integration announced to simplify digital payments abroad

India will integrate its Unified Payments Interface with Indonesia’s digital payments ecosystem, a move aimed at easing cross-border travel, trade and business transactions between the two countries, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced during his address in Jakarta.The proposed linkage will allow users from both countries to make retail digital payments using their domestic apps while travelling or doing business abroad, reducing dependence on cash and international cards. Officials said the integration is expected to benefit tourists, small businesses and professionals by simplifying everyday transactions and lowering friction in cross-border commerce.The India–Indonesia payments linkage is part of a broader push to internationalise Unified Payments Interface, which has emerged as one of the world’s largest real-time retail payments platforms. Policymakers see such bilateral integrations as a way to deepen economic ties, support ease of doing business and promote digital public infrastructure exports.The announcement follows similar initiatives in Southeast Asia. In June, UPI was rolled out in Cambodia, enabling Indian travellers to make digital payments across the country using their existing UPI-enabled apps. Users can scan Cambodia’s national QR code system, KHQR, to pay at more than 4.5 million merchant outlets, including restaurants, retail stores and tourist locations.The Cambodia rollout was enabled through a partnership between NPCI International Payments Limited, the international arm of the National Payments Corporation of India, and ACLEDA Bank. It marked the first phase of a cross-border QR payment linkage between the two countries, allowing Indian users to complete transactions in real time without the need for cash or foreign exchange cards.Such overseas integrations are being pursued at a time when UPI continues to scale rapidly at home. According to NPCI data, the platform is projected to process around 240 billion transactions in FY26, a year-on-year growth of nearly 30%. While this represents a moderation from the 41% growth recorded in FY25, the volumes underline UPI’s deepening penetration across consumers and merchants. The platform processed 185 billion transactions in FY25, up from 131 billion in FY24.Alongside international expansion, NPCI is also accelerating product upgrades to retain UPI’s competitiveness, particularly in online payments. The organisation is pushing the rollout of UPI Meta, also referred to internally as UPI Checkout, which aims to make ecommerce payments faster and more seamless.Industry executives say NPCI has grown increasingly concerned that tokenised credit cards, coupled with biometric authentication and one-click checkout experiences, are narrowing UPI’s speed advantage in online transactions. Since card credentials are securely stored on merchant platforms, users do not need to repeatedly enter details such as CVVs, making card payments frictionless for frequent shoppers.The urgency has also increased ahead of the expected India launch of Apple Pay. Executives believe that affluent users, who form a growing segment of high-value UPI transactions, could gravitate towards card-linked payment ecosystems if checkout experiences are significantly smoother.Against this backdrop, policymakers and industry participants see cross-border UPI integrations such as the one announced with Indonesia as a strategic lever. Beyond supporting tourism and remittances, these linkages are intended to position India’s digital payments infrastructure as a global public good while reinforcing UPI’s relevance amid intensifying competition at home and abroad.