The UAE is connected to India’s UPI and RuPay payments network across three distinct tracks, a presentation by NPCI International Payments Limited has shown, placing it among a small group of countries with both merchant acceptance and domestic payment infrastructure ties to India’s system.
The presentation listed the UAE under UPI acceptance, RuPay card acceptance and Domestic Card Switch partnerships, making it one of the more comprehensively integrated markets in the scheme.
JAYWAN: the UAE’s own card scheme built on RuPay
The deepest layer of that relationship is the UAE’s domestic card scheme, JAYWAN. India’s Press Information Bureau confirmed that NPCI International is collaborating with Al Etihad Payments to enable JAYWAN by sharing the RuPay technology stack, making the UAE the first country in the GCC with which India has shared that infrastructure.
JAYWAN was launched during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the UAE in February 2024. The Press Information Bureau stated that the first phase of the project, covering the launch of the JAYWAN card itself, was completed on 7 October 2024.
Beyond JAYWAN, the NPCI International presentation showed UPI merchant-payment capabilities live across 11 countries, allowing Indian travellers to pay at local QR codes through their UPI-enabled apps. Countries cited in that context included Singapore, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan.
Scale of UPI and what it means for UAE merchants
The payments volume behind these international links is substantial. India’s Unified Payments Interface processed 24.5 billion transactions worth around $315 billion in August alone, according to figures presented by NPCI International.
NPCI said close to 1 billion UPI transactions are processed each day and that UPI accounts for around 80 per cent of all digital payments in India. More than 500 million people actively use the platform, and around 55 million unique merchants are connected to it.
Merchants in supported markets, including the UAE, can accept payments through QR codes without needing dedicated card terminals, which lowers the barrier for smaller businesses to receive payments from Indian customers. NPCI International has also partnered with Network International, a payment enabler operating across the Middle East, to extend UPI QR acceptance to Network International’s merchant base in the UAE.
The UAE has a large Indian resident population, making it one of the more commercially significant markets for UPI’s international expansion. Indian nationals working in the UAE regularly send remittances home; the NPCI International presentation showed Singapore, Nepal and Greece under UPI remittance partnerships, though the UAE was not listed in that remittance column at the time of the briefing.
NPCI International’s broader expansion work
NPCI International was established in 2020 to extend India’s payment capabilities to other countries, working on both interoperability partnerships and the export of payment infrastructure. The parent body, NPCI, was set up in 2008 and launched RuPay, India’s domestic card scheme, in 2012. More than 800 million RuPay cards are now in circulation. UPI followed in 2016 and has expanded into recurring payments, e-commerce, credit-linked payments and some offline functions.
NPCI International divides its international work into two broad areas: interoperability partnerships, which cover UPI and RuPay acceptance abroad, and infrastructure-building, through which it helps partner countries build their own domestic real-time payment systems using India’s technology. JAYWAN sits in that second category.
The NPCI presentation also referenced the India Stack framework, which underpins UPI alongside systems such as Aadhaar identity verification, DigiLocker and DigiYatra, giving the broader digital payments ecosystem a unified technical base.
A Yahoo Finance report on a separate NPCI International partnership cited UPI acceptance across ten countries as of that reporting period, a figure that could expand as NPCI International continues its outreach programme. The next milestone to watch is the broader rollout of the JAYWAN card beyond its initial launch phase.
