Thursday 18 / September / 2025
New Delhi : India’s digital story has moved from promise to scale. What began as a cluster of well-designed pilot projects has become a full-blown national architecture — one that delivers identity, payments and service access to hundreds of millions, and that is increasingly being shared with other developing nations.
The result is an empowering, people-centric model of technology-led development: robust public digital infrastructure underpins everyday transactions, Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has become the backbone of a cash-lite economy, and India’s digital partnerships with the Global South are translating domestic success into international cooperation.
At the heart of this transformation is a layered approach to public digital infrastructure. Aadhaar’s biometric identity system, the data empowerment and portability frameworks, and the payments rail together form interoperable building blocks that make digital services reliable and widely usable.
Aadhaar alone has provided a unique identity to well over a billion residents, enabling everything from bank account opening to direct benefit transfers with unprecedented reach.
The Unique Identification Authority of India reports the issuance of more than 1.4 billion Aadhaar numbers, a foundation that has made large-scale digital delivery practicable.
Payments, however, are where India’s digital model has truly captured global attention.
UPI, launched less than a decade ago, has matured into a payments powerhouse. In the financial year 2024–25, UPI processed a staggering 185.8 billion transactions, reflecting year-on-year growth that underscores how deeply instant digital payments are woven into daily life across cities and villages.
In that same period, UPI accounted for roughly 83.7% of India’s digital payment volumes, signalling its dominance as the preferred retail payment method for consumers and merchants alike.
These volumes translate into real economic convenience: millions of merchants, informal vendors and service providers now accept instant, interoperable payments without heavy hardware investments.
The institutional success behind UPI is reflected in the health of the ecosystem that operates it.
The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which runs UPI, reported a strong financial year for 2024–25, with standalone revenue rising and profitability improving — a sign that large-scale public infrastructure can also be sustainable and innovation-driven.
NPCI’s reported revenue growth to about $370 million (₹3,270 crore) in FY25 signals not only operational scale but also the maturation of a public-good platform into a globally respected payments engine.
India’s digital momentum is also measurable through broader indices: the Reserve Bank of India’s Digital Payments Index rose to 493.22 as of March 2025, reflecting an improving supply-side infrastructure and stronger consumer adoption.
That increase captures how payment rails, connectivity, devices and digital literacy are converging to create a resilient ecosystem that supports commerce, services and public delivery.
Beyond domestic impact, India’s DPI—digital public infrastructure—is now a diplomatic and developmental asset.
Countries across the Global South are engaging with Indian institutions to learn, adapt, and adopt parts of the India Stack model.
From identity systems inspired by Aadhaar to payment rails modelled on UPI, the demand for practical, scalable blueprints is high. India’s approach — emphasising open, interoperable APIs and public-led platforms that foster private-sector innovation — is particularly attractive for nations looking to accelerate financial inclusion, streamline subsidies, and digitise government services without reinventing core building blocks.
That international interest has produced concrete linkages. UPI is expanding beyond India’s borders through bilateral and commercial arrangements.
The interoperability ambitions have attracted global players: recent announcements about PayPal’s new cross-border platform include plans to interoperate with local payment systems such as UPI, promising easier transfers and broader reach for merchants and consumers in multiple markets.
Meanwhile, Gulf countries, parts of Southeast Asia and other regions have been piloting or enabling UPI-based corridors to serve large expatriate communities and tourists, illustrating how a homegrown payment standard is gaining international traction.
The societal benefits of this digital evolution are tangible. UPI’s ubiquity has lowered transaction costs for small businesses, eased remittances for migrant workers, and brought formal financial tools to previously unbanked populations.
When transactions move to secure, traceable rails, governments can better target subsidies, microfinance providers can extend services with less risk, and entrepreneurs can scale with predictable cash flows.
The Digital Payments Index improvements and rising UPI volumes are not abstract statistics; they reflect increased convenience, trust and the ability of millions to participate more fully in economic life.
India’s stewardship of public digital infrastructure has also emphasised governance and privacy alongside scale.
Steps to strengthen data protection, empower citizens over their personal data, and make identity and payment systems auditable and secure are part of the broader narrative that these platforms are public goods built for long-term utility.
This balance — scaling fast while investing in safeguards — is a lesson that other developing nations find both practical and reassuring when they explore similar paths.
Crucially, India is sharing this model through cooperation rather than one-way export.
Technical assistance, capacity building, and collaborative pilots enable partner countries to adapt elements of India’s stack to their contexts.
This South-South cooperation model, where experience and open-source components are offered as a starting point, is helping other governments leapfrog stages of digital development while maintaining local ownership and policy choices.
The road ahead is vibrant. UPI’s continued innovation, including merchant credit, recurring payments and seamless international linkage, hints at an even broader digital finance ecosystem.
Investments in connectivity and device affordability will bring more users online, while targeted digital literacy initiatives will ensure that the benefits are widely shared.
As India’s DPI continues to evolve, it will increasingly act as a platform not only for domestic inclusion but also for building interoperable, people-centric solutions across the Global South.
India’s digital evolution is therefore more than scale statistics; it is a demonstration of how thoughtfully designed public infrastructure — combined with private innovation and international partnership — can accelerate development.
With Aadhaar providing identity, UPI enabling transactions at an enormous scale, and DPI principles guiding exports of know-how, India is writing a new chapter of development cooperation: one in which technology is a shared asset, inclusion is central, and practical, replicable models drive growth across borders.
The world is watching, learning, and adopting — and India’s example is powering a more connected, empowered Global South.
