The New Delhi BRICS 2026 Summit has opened a potentially significant new chapter for digital payments. Instead of pursuing a common BRICS currency.
SMEStreet Edit Desk13 Sep 2026
19:30IST
New Update
BRICS 2026 and the Globalisation of UPI: Can India Turn Its Digital Payment Revolution Into a Cross-Border Payments Powerhouse?
BRICS 2026 could mark an important turning point in India’s digital payments journey. As member countries push for faster, cheaper and more interoperable cross-border payment systems, India’s homegrown UPI is emerging as a potential global payments rail. For India, the opportunity goes beyond international UPI acceptance—it could open new avenues in remittances, MSME trade, fintech exports, local-currency settlements and digital commerce across emerging markets.
Perhaps the most important change taking place around India’s digital economy is philosophical.
India is no longer presenting UPI merely as an Indian success story. It is increasingly presenting its Digital Public Infrastructure as something that can be connected with, adapted by and shared with other economies.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi articulated this philosophy several years ago when he said:
“Tools like UPI and RuPay provide an unparalleled opportunity for every country.”
Speaking at the InFinity Forum, the Prime Minister positioned UPI as a potential low-cost, reliable real-time payment and remittance infrastructure for economies outside India as well.
That vision has become considerably more relevant after BRICS 2026.
The question today is no longer whether UPI can operate outside India.
It already does.
The bigger question is whether India can make UPI one of the connecting layers of the next generation of international payment infrastructure.
Piyush Goyal Made India’s BRICS Ambition Explicit
At the BRICS Business Forum 2026, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal went considerably further than simply praising India’s digital payment achievement.
His message to BRICS members was explicit:
“Link our payment systems, trade in each other’s local currencies, make digital trade global.”
Goyal pointed out that UPI has crossed more than 250 billion transactions annually and is already accepted internationally. He urged BRICS member and partner countries to interconnect their payment systems and expand digital commerce.
This statement deserves particular attention.
India is effectively proposing something more sophisticated than exporting another payments app.
It is proposing payment-system connectivity.
For Indian MSMEs, exporters, fintech companies and banks, that distinction could become extremely important.
A future BRICS payment ecosystem may not require consumers in Brazil, Russia or the UAE to become UPI users in the conventional sense.
Their domestic payment systems could potentially communicate with India’s UPI infrastructure.
That is where the opportunity becomes much bigger.
RBI Sees Cross-Border Payments as the Next Frontier
The Reserve Bank of India is also clearly looking in the same direction.
RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra said in August 2026:
“There is a lot of scope for reducing costs, especially for retail transactions and increasing speed.”
His remarks came while discussing potential linkages between BRICS fast-payment systems and central bank digital currencies.
This gets to the heart of the economic argument.
Cross-border payments remain significantly more complicated than domestic payments.
International transactions can involve correspondent banks, foreign-exchange conversion, compliance checks, settlement delays and several layers of transaction fees.
For a large multinational company, these costs may be manageable.
For an MSME receiving a relatively small international payment, they can become disproportionately significant.
The ability to connect instant-payment systems could therefore have consequences extending far beyond consumer convenience.
It could lower the friction involved in international commerce itself.
UPI’s Globalisation Is Already Underway
Governor Malhotra has described UPI as:
“A success story without any parallel.”
In an April 2026 address, he noted that India accounts for nearly half of the world’s real-time digital-payment volume and said India is working to connect UPI with additional international systems, including the European Central Bank’s TARGET Instant Payment Settlement infrastructure.
This is an important reminder.
BRICS is only one part of India’s payment diplomacy.
India is simultaneously building or exploring payment connectivity across Asia, the Middle East and Europe.
The UPI-PayNow linkage with Singapore provides a particularly useful example.
Instead of asking Singapore to replace PayNow with UPI—or India to replace UPI with PayNow—the two systems have been interconnected.
That model could potentially offer a blueprint for BRICS.
The future may therefore not be:
UPI versus Pix.
UPI versus another country’s instant-payment platform.
UPI connected to Pix, PayNow and other sovereign instant-payment systems.
That would be a fundamentally different model of payment globalisation.
Modi’s “Democratisation of Technology” Could Become India’s Competitive Pitch
There is another reason why India’s proposition may appeal particularly strongly to emerging economies.
India’s Digital Public Infrastructure model is not built around a single private technology company owning the entire ecosystem.
Prime Minister Modi has described India’s approach succinctly:
“Bharat democratized technology, showing a new path through Digital Public Infrastructure.”
He has argued that public digital platforms can provide a common infrastructure on top of which private enterprises continue to innovate.
This is potentially India’s biggest strategic advantage in the Global South.
Countries considering their future payments infrastructure face an important choice.
Should digital payments become dependent on foreign private networks?
Should every country attempt to independently build an entirely new national payment infrastructure?
Or can sovereign payment networks be built domestically and then connected internationally?
India can increasingly position UPI and its broader DPI expertise around the third option.
BRICS Could Become a Laboratory for Payment Interoperability
The New Delhi Declaration makes the direction even clearer.
BRICS leaders acknowledged work being undertaken by the BRICS Payment Task Force on cross-border interoperability of payment and messaging channels, alongside greater settlement and investment using local currencies.
Importantly, the declaration also recognises that there is “no one-size-fits-all approach.”
That may prove crucial.
A one-size-fits-all BRICS payment platform would face substantial political, regulatory and technological resistance.
Brazil has Pix.
India has UPI.
Russia has its own fast-payment infrastructure.
China has a massive and sophisticated payments ecosystem.
Other members have their own banking, monetary and regulatory structures.
Trying to replace these systems with a single platform would be extraordinarily difficult.
Connecting them is far more realistic.
What Could This Mean for Indian MSMEs?
This is where the BRICS payments story becomes particularly relevant for SMEStreet’s core readership.
Imagine an Indian MSME supplying engineering components to a Brazilian customer.
Today, receiving payment may require conventional international banking infrastructure, currency conversion and potentially multiple intermediaries.
Now imagine a future in which Pix and UPI are interoperable.
The Brazilian customer initiates payment through the familiar domestic payment interface.
The transaction travels through an agreed cross-border infrastructure.
Currency conversion occurs transparently.
The Indian MSME receives rupees directly into its account.
The entire process potentially occurs much faster and at significantly lower cost.
That scenario does not exist across BRICS today.
But this is the direction towards which the policy conversation is moving.
And if it materialises, payment interoperability could effectively become trade infrastructure for MSMEs.
Jaishankar’s BRICS Message Is Particularly Relevant to MSMEs
External Affairs Minister Dr S. Jaishankar framed the larger commercial objective of BRICS cooperation around making it easier for enterprises to connect internationally.
“Make it easier for businesses in our countries to find more partners, access more markets, connect supply networks.”
That objective is directly connected with payments.
Market access means little if the financial infrastructure required to transact across those markets remains costly or cumbersome.
For MSMEs especially, trade facilitation and payment facilitation ultimately need to evolve together.
From Remittances to E-Commerce: Where the Opportunity Lies
A globally connected UPI ecosystem could develop through several stages.
International merchant payments are the most visible starting point. Indian travellers being able to scan familiar QR codes overseas creates immediate consumer value.
Remittances could become even more important. India receives enormous international remittance flows, and reducing payment costs even modestly can produce substantial benefits.
Cross-border e-commerce represents another major opportunity. Indian artisans, manufacturers, consultants, SaaS providers and online sellers increasingly transact internationally in relatively small ticket sizes.
Traditional international payment structures were not always designed economically for such transactions.
Instant-payment interoperability could help change that.
Then comes B2B payments, particularly at the smaller end of the enterprise market.
And behind all of these sits another industry opportunity:
India’s fintech infrastructure exports.
The Competitive Landscape: UPI Cannot Assume Global Leadership
India’s domestic success should not be confused with automatic international dominance.
UPI will face formidable competitors and potential partners.
Brazil’s Pix
Pix is arguably UPI’s most important conceptual peer within BRICS.
It has achieved remarkable domestic adoption and shows that Brazil, like India, already possesses world-class instant-payment infrastructure.
India therefore should not approach Brazil with a proposition of replacing Pix.
The bigger opportunity is connecting Pix and UPI.
China’s Payment Ecosystem
China represents another order of competition.
UnionPay already possesses extensive international acceptance. Chinese digital-wallet providers have also created significant global merchant networks.
India’s strength lies in interoperable public infrastructure.
China’s strength includes massive international commercial reach.
This will be an important competitive dynamic to watch.
Visa and Mastercard
The global card networks remain formidable incumbents.
They offer something UPI does not yet have globally: extraordinarily broad merchant acceptance combined with mature foreign-exchange, fraud management, dispute resolution and settlement systems.
UPI’s challenge is therefore not simply to process transactions faster.
It must build an international ecosystem around the transaction itself.
SWIFT and International Banking Networks
High-value business transactions will continue to require sophisticated banking infrastructure.
UPI should consequently not be viewed simply as a replacement for SWIFT.
The more immediate opportunity is to radically improve areas such as retail payments, remittances, merchant transactions and potentially smaller business payments.
India’s Real Competition Is Over Payment Architecture
The battle may ultimately not be about which logo consumers see on their smartphone.
The deeper competition is about which technological principles shape global payments.
Will the future be dominated primarily by proprietary global networks?
Will national systems remain isolated from each other?
Or will interoperable sovereign payment systems communicate seamlessly across borders?
India is making a powerful case for the third model.
Prime Minister Modi has repeatedly stressed openness and interoperability while describing India’s DPI journey.
In a 2026 discussion on India’s experience, he said India’s digital infrastructure was built:
“As a public good, not a proprietary platform.”
He specifically identified open and interoperable architecture as a factor allowing innovation to flourish.
That philosophy could become the real Indian export.
Not merely UPI.
But the architecture behind UPI.
What Should India’s Payment Industry Expect After BRICS 2026?
The opportunities are likely to emerge across the financial ecosystem.
Indian banks could develop increasingly sophisticated cross-border instant-payment capabilities.
Payment companies may need embedded foreign-exchange functionality.
Fintech firms could develop international compliance infrastructure.
Cybersecurity companies could build real-time transaction-monitoring solutions.
Payment gateways could establish global merchant relationships.
RegTech startups could help reconcile different AML and KYC requirements.
Digital identity providers could participate in international verification systems.
Indian SaaS providers could develop reconciliation, settlement and treasury software specifically for instant cross-border transactions.
This means the globalisation of UPI could eventually support an ecosystem considerably larger than NPCI itself.
Cybersecurity and Trust Will Be Critical
There is, however, another important quote from Prime Minister Modi that India’s fintech industry should remember:
“Fintech innovation will be incomplete without fintech security innovation.”
That observation becomes even more relevant when payments cross borders.
International interoperability dramatically expands the potential attack surface.
Countries will need robust systems for fraud detection, identity verification, AML surveillance, transaction monitoring and dispute resolution.
Cybersecurity could consequently become one of the largest ancillary opportunities created by the globalisation of UPI.
Indian companies possessing expertise in payments security may ultimately find international markets alongside the payment infrastructure itself.
The SMEStreet Perspective: UPI Should Become a Global Rail, Not Merely a Global Brand
BRICS 2026 could mark an important transition in India’s digital-payment journey.
But India should define success correctly.
Counting how many countries display a UPI logo is useful.
It is not sufficient.
The more meaningful indicators will be:
how many foreign instant-payment systems connect with UPI;
how much cross-border volume these corridors process;
how much transaction costs fall;
how quickly settlements happen;
how widely MSMEs use the infrastructure;
and how many Indian fintech companies participate in the resulting international ecosystem.
India’s strategic objective should not necessarily be to persuade the entire world to abandon its payment systems and adopt UPI.
That is neither realistic nor required.
A much more powerful vision would be for UPI to become one of the world’s principal connecting rails between sovereign digital-payment systems.
Piyush Goyal’s call at BRICS captures that ambition particularly well:
“Link our payment systems… make digital trade global.”
That phrase could ultimately define the next chapter of India’s digital-payment story.
For the past decade, India demonstrated that billions of domestic payments could become instantaneous, interoperable and inexpensive.
The coming decade will determine whether India can help do something similar across borders.
If BRICS succeeds in transforming payment interoperability from diplomatic language into working financial corridors, the implications will extend far beyond payments.
For Indian MSMEs, exporters, fintech startups, banks and technology companies, it could gradually reduce one of the oldest barriers to global business—the friction involved in getting paid.
And that could make BRICS 2026 one of the more consequential milestones in the international journey of India’s homegrown UPI revolution.
Narendra ModiBRICSDigital PaymentNPCIUPIBRICS 2026
