What the Expansion of International Instant Payment Rails Could Mean

India has global ambitions for the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), its wildly popular and admired instant payments system. The way it has positioned the system—and similar moves elsewhere, such as Brazil (with Pix)—serves as a model for countries with similar aims. In the United States, for example, instant payments have been slower to catch on in a much more fragmented payments landscape and among a populace that to some extent resists the digital IDs at the center of such payment schemes. 

This Javelin Strategy & Research report looks at the challenges and opportunities in giving UPI and similar systems a more global reach. There are particular reasons for UPI’s rise in India that will be difficult to replicate in other countries, but there are also openings to transform hard-to-penetrate problems like easy and inexpensive cross-border payments and to serve the millions of Indians living abroad.

Key questions discussed in this report:

• How has India spurred the widespread adoption of UPI, its instant payment interface?
• What are the international ambitions of UPI and similar systems, like Brazil’s Pix?
• How does the U.S. payments landscape differ and what could be done to connect with systems like UPI?
   

Companies Mentioned:

Aadhaar, Apple, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), FedNow, Google, International Monetary Fund (IMF), Mastercard Open Banking, National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), NPCI International Payments Limited, PayNow, PayPal, PayXpert, PIX, Plaid, PPRO, Reserve Bank of India, Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT), The Clearing House, The Federal Reserve, Trustly, Unified Payment Interface (UPI), Visa, Western Union, Wise