Tech & Science
Digital public infrastructure
How India's UPI Became the World's Payment Rail
India's Unified Payments Interface processed 22.64 billion transactions in March 2026 and is now live in eight countries, linking to Europe's TIPS and in talks with Alipay+. We explain how the free, interoperable system works, why a developing country is exporting payment rails to Peru and Namibia, and the unresolved question of who pays for a network that charges nothing.