India has switched on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) in Greece, taking the payments system to a tenth country abroad. In India, UPI now accounts for more than three of every four rupees spent digitally at merchants in the country.
Greece comes on board
Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal announced the launch during an official visit to Athens, where he watched a live demonstration of UPI services at the headquarters of Eurobank, one of Greece’s largest banking groups. The rollout runs on a partnership between Eurobank and NPCI International Payments Limited (NIPL), the arm of the National Payments Corporation of India that handles UPI’s expansion overseas.
Goyal said the system would allow eligible customers to transfer money instantly and securely, at a fraction of the cost of conventional cross-border transfers. He was joined at the demonstration by Eurobank chief executive Fokion Karavias and Sanjay Tugnait, chief executive of Fairfax Digital Services.
The minister described the growing acceptance of UPI abroad as a reflection of global trust in India’s technology-led solutions, and said such tie-ups deepen partnerships for shared growth.
Greece becomes the tenth country where UPI is now accepted, joining Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, France, Mauritius, Nepal, Bhutan, Qatar, Sri Lanka and Cambodia. The expansion in Europe follows UPI’s launch at Galeries Lafayette, the department store in Nice, a few weeks ago, and an earlier rollout at the Eiffel Tower in Paris in 2024. Indian travellers can now use UPI at a widening set of merchant locations across these markets, in many cases through the same apps they use at home.
At home, UPI keeps gaining ground
The overseas push comes against the backdrop of UPI’s continued rise within India’s own merchant payments landscape. Digital payments to merchants rose about 21% from a year earlier in May to Rs 11.3 lakh crore, data compiled from Reserve Bank of India and National Payments Corporation of India figures shows, with UPI accounting for the bulk of that growth.
UPI-based merchant transactions, referred to in the industry as UPI-P2M (person-to-merchant), grew 25.2% year-on-year to touch Rs 8.7 lakh crore in May. That took UPI’s share of all digital merchant spending to 77.1%, up nearly three percentage points from a year earlier.
Credit card spending grew at a far more modest 6.6% over the year to Rs 2.02 lakh crore, and its share of the overall digital payments pie slipped to 17.9% from close to 19% over the preceding year. Debit card spending fell 4.3% year-on-year to Rs 352 billion.
In simple terms, for every Rs 100 spent digitally at merchants in India last month, more than Rs 77 moved through UPI, against roughly Rs 18 through credit cards and around Rs 3 through debit cards.