Discuss how India is leveraging Digital Public Infrastructure like UPI as an instrument of economic diplomacy in Central Asia and beyond.

Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) — population-scale, interoperable digital platforms — has become a distinct instrument of India's economic statecraft. With 55.49 crore users onboarded by June 2026 [3], UPI's domestic scale gives India a proven, low-cost export product, and the recent NPCI International–Uzbekistan arrangement shows how technology is being converted into diplomatic capital.

The Central Asian opening

• NPCI International (NIPL) signed a commercial agreement with Uzbekistan's National Interbank Processing Centre (NIPC), operator of the HUMO payment system, allowing Indian travellers to pay merchants by scanning UZQR, Uzbekistan's national QR code [1].
• Backed by approvals of the RBI and the Central Bank of Uzbekistan, it was announced during the bilateral visit that set a trade target of USD 1 billion to USD 5 billion by 2030 [1].
• Payments diplomacy thus supplements India's broader Central Asia outreach — connectivity, energy and trade — recorded in the MEA's bilateral engagement with Uzbekistan [4].

The model: interoperability, not imposition

• India integrates UPI with a partner's existing national QR standard rather than replacing it — first executed with Cambodia's KHQR, opening 4.5 million merchants to Indian travellers, with a two-way corridor planned [2].
• This respects partner sovereignty, costs little, and is easily replicated — a template rather than a one-off deal.

Beyond Central Asia

• UPI acceptance now spans ten countries, including Singapore, UAE, France, Mauritius, Nepal, Bhutan, Qatar, Sri Lanka, Cambodia and Greece [1], serving tourists, students and diaspora remittances.
• It positions India as a norm-setter in DPI for the Global South, complementing its G20 advocacy.

Limits

• Corridors remain largely bilateral and mostly one-way outbound acceptance; scaling depends on partner regulators, data-protection alignment and competition from established card networks.

India's DPI diplomacy converts domestic digital success into external influence at minimal cost. Moving from outbound acceptance to genuine two-way corridors, remittance links and capacity-sharing agreements would deepen this. Anchored in interoperability rather than dominance, UPI's globalisation advances both India's economic interests and the inclusive-finance goals of SDG 8 and 10.