India’s government and central bank are in talks with Ant International about allowing
Alipay+ to be linked with India’s instant payments system for cross-border transactions, according to two government sources.
The move would help make payments easier for Indian tourists as they would be able to use India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) with merchants in foreign countries who have signed up with Alipay+.
The sources declined to be identified as the discussions have not been made public.
India’s finance ministry, the Reserve Bank of India and the National Payments Corporation of India did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Singapore-based Ant International, an overseas arm of Chinese fintech giant Ant Group, also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The online Pekingnology.com notes that “China processes the highest volume of digital payments in the world—hundreds of billions of transactions in 2024, the overwhelming majority mediated through two apps, Alipay and WeChat Pay.
“India, meanwhile, accounts for the world’s largest volume of real-time payments through the government-built Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which enables instant, bank-to-bank transfers. Both countries have leapfrogged credit and debit cards, moving to a world of ubiquitous QR codes.”
Both systems began their journey at opposite ends: with China it was a bunch of private players building payments into e-commerce and messaging platforms. In the case of India, it was the government building a payments infra through the United Payments Interface (UPI).
Today, Google Pay and Phone Pe dominate the UPI while with China it is AliPay and WeChat. The market structures in both countries are similar although the governance levers are different.
The Indian government deliberately made the entry barriers free for private players, thereby hoping that small merchants and companies could enter. They did but even so, the entire payment is dominated to the extent of 80% by GooglePay and PhonePe. The government-built app BHIM does only 1% of transactions.
