[rohithkp]

UPI can potentially be scaled to all countries. I think the biggest USP of UPI is the interoperability between payment apps(Google Pay, Paytm, PhonePe, etc), VPAs(alice@icici, bob@axis, dan@upi, 9848123456@paytm) and banks. One could have an account with bank A, create a VPA with bank B and use that VPA to pay a business through virtually any of the payment apps(GPay, Paytm, PhonePe, BHIM, etc). The main pain point UPI addresses is instant transfer, zero cost transfer irrespective of transaction size and removal of friction due to credential exchange. NPCI (the creators of UPI) are already in talks with the UAE and other neighbouring countries to build a cross nation interoperable payment stack. Since no player in the entire stack can charge a service fee, the way that payment apps have monetized UPI is by acquiring customers through payments and selling value added services like insurance, prepaid mobile recharges and mutual funds/ETFs. Interoperability allows for balancing and decentralisation of network load across multiple providers, making transactions less likely to fail. Also cross border exchange is another problem that is still unsolved. Maybe a UPI backed approach to real-time currency transfers is a pipe dream but in a ideal world every transaction, irrespective of point of origin, size or currency would be as seamless as an UPI transaction.

On a side note, I wonder if something like this could be built in the web3 space. A totally decentralised public blockchain implementation of the payment network using UPI-esque interoperability between payment providers and banks.

[chintler]

I took a trip last month(within India) with about ₹600 cash and returned with ₹560, with UPI for everything from chai to flight tickets. It's just so frictionless.

UPI was built around mobile phones, and a significant part of the trust comes from the KYC that was enforced from the beginning for mobile connections. I'm not sure how well that process will scale across countries and across currencies. Still, with the international partnerships coming up, I'm excited for the possibilities that are presenting in the payments space.

[ComputerGuru]

You can use UPI as a foreigner without an Indian bank account?

[devnull3]

Actually the India-Singapore link will start in 2022 [1]

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/13/india-and-singapore-to-lin...

[dustintrex]

But it's going to be an overlapping mesh of 1-to-1 agreements. Singapore is also negotiating with Malaysia to allow cross-border payments, but it's unlikely a Malaysian user would be able to chain these together to pay someone in India.

[nine_k]

I suppose that various KYC / AML checks are a significant obstacle to frictionless international payments; another is fraud protection.

I bet it's seriously harder to get two countries agree on the lists of undesirables, and streamline e.g. court protection across jurisdictions.

[melony]

Will this suffer from the usual payment restrictions imposed by PayPal/Stripe?

[kalleboo]

VISA/MasterCard-based services suffer from US regulatory pressure, applying US norms across the planet. Non-US-based payments systems will instead have pressure from their respective countries. For instance they may care less about WikiLeaks pulling the pants down on US intelligence, but may be even more strict on porn.