New Delhi: India’s QR-code-based digital payments system, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), is set to expand further overseas, with Japan emerging as a potential new destination after trials aimed at facilitating payments by Indian tourists, a report said on Friday.
According to a Nikkei Asia report, Japanese IT services firm NTT Data is partnering with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to conduct a trial in Japan during FY26. The initiative would allow Indian tourists to make payments using UPI, with transactions directly debited from their Indian bank accounts.
“The companies are considering ways to connect Japanese and Indian payment networks,” the report said.
The move is driven by a sharp rise in Indian tourists visiting Japan. The country welcomed around 3.15 lakh Indian visitors in 2025, marking a 35 per cent increase year-on-year.
The report also cited a McKinsey projection estimating that outbound trips from India could surge from 13 million in 2022 to 90 million by 2040, fuelled by rising middle-class incomes and increasing appetite for international travel.
Launched in 2016 as a government-led initiative, UPI has become an integral part of daily life in India, enabling seamless digital payments through a single QR code across multiple payment applications.
UPI transactions grew 42 per cent in fiscal 2024 to 185.8 billion. An International Monetary Fund (IMF) report in June 2025 described UPI as the “world’s largest real-time payment system.”
Since 2021, NPCI and the Indian government have expanded UPI to eight countries, including Bhutan, Singapore, France, Sri Lanka and the UAE, while also assisting nations such as Peru and Namibia in developing similar digital payment infrastructure.
The report noted that UPI’s rapid domestic adoption has been driven by its shared-platform architecture, allowing banks and fintech firms to build interoperable payment apps on a common standard.
UPI accounted for 58 per cent of in-store payments in India in 2024 and is projected to rise to 76 per cent by 2030. During the same period, cash transactions are expected to decline from 15 per cent to 7 per cent, according to US payments firm Worldpay.
NTT Data, which is expected to promote UPI adoption among Japanese merchants, already provides payment terminals to businesses in India and Southeast Asia. Around six million Indian stores, including e-commerce platforms, currently use its services.
With inputs from IANS