The UAE has been connected to India's UPI acceptance network, placing it among a small group of countries where Indian digital payment systems now function across borders.

Alongside the UAE, the network includes Qatar, Singapore, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Cambodia, France and Mauritius. For UAE residents and visitors with ties to India, this means broader access to a payments system that has become central to how money moves domestically in India.

What the UAE is connected to

Beyond UPI acceptance, the UAE is also listed for RuPay Card Acceptance, a group that includes Mauritius, Nepal, Singapore, Maldives and Bhutan. The UAE additionally features in Domestic Card Switch partnerships, another layer of the payments infrastructure India has been extending internationally.

This expansion is managed through NPCI International, which was established in 2020 specifically to grow India's payment capabilities beyond its borders. UPI merchant-payment capabilities are already live in 11 countries, with Singapore, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan cited as examples where the system is functioning for merchant transactions.

The scale behind UPI and RuPay

The numbers behind these systems help explain why their international reach matters. UPI processed 24.5 billion transactions worth approximately $315 billion in August alone, and the platform now accounts for roughly 80 percent of all digital payments made in India. More than 500 million people actively use UPI, and the country processes close to 1 billion UPI transactions every day. More than 55 million unique merchants are connected to the network.

RuPay, the card payment system also linked to the UAE, has more than 800 million cards in circulation. RuPay launched in 2012, four years before UPI arrived in 2016. Both systems sit under the oversight of the National Payments Corporation of India, or NPCI, which was established in 2008 as a not-for-profit organisation under the guidance of the Reserve Bank of India.

Why this matters for the UAE

For a country like the UAE, with deep economic and demographic ties to India, links to UPI and RuPay signal a step toward more integrated digital payments between the two nations. As these systems continue to expand into new markets, the addition of the UAE places it within a network that already spans Qatar, Singapore, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Cambodia, France, Mauritius and Maldives, each connected in different ways to India's payments infrastructure.

The broader push by NPCI International reflects a strategy of extending India's domestic payment success onto a global stage, one country and one partnership at a time.

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Reported by Khaleej Times