SDG 9: Industry, Innovation & Infrastructure | SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals
Institutions: Reserve Bank of India | NPCI | Ministry of Finance
At the Global Fintech Festival 2025, RBI Governor and Deputy Governor unveiled a series of next-generation UPI solutions to strengthen India’s payment ecosystem and enable seamless domestic and cross-border transactions.
Key launches included:
UPI Multi-Signatory Mode, allowing corporate and joint accounts to authorise transactions through multi-party digital approval.
UPI Lite Wearables, extending offline, low-value payments to smart rings and watches.
“Bharat Connect” Cross-Border Platform, integrating forex and remittance channels for low-cost instant payments between India and partner countries.
AI-powered UPI HELP (Small Language Model): an assistant for checking transaction status, lodging complaints, managing mandates, and disbursing guidance — currently in English, with multilingual support on the roadmap.
IoT Payments with UPI: enabling devices like cars, smart TVs, or wearables to execute payments via contextual triggers and user limits — extending UPI beyond phones.
Banking Connect: an interoperable net-banking solution that streamlines payments, merchant onboarding, and aggregation across UPI and bank infrastructure.
UPI Reserve Pay: lets users “block” a portion of their credit (e.g. credit card limit) specifically for repeated transactions on select merchant apps, giving transparency and control.
These innovations build on RBI’s strategy for Payments Vision 2025, which seeks to make UPI “borderless, context-aware, and ubiquitous.” The enhancements position India as a global standards-setter in real-time payments, with NPCI International driving bilateral linkages across ASEAN and GCC markets.
By embedding AI, IoT, interoperability, and credit control, the RBI–NPCI initiative enhances UPI’s stickiness, reach, and sophistication. The move strengthens India’s leadership in global payment innovation, opens new avenues for fintech exports, and deepens financial inclusion by meeting users where they live — in devices, contexts, and credit ecosystems..
What is UPI Lite X and Bharat Connect?
UPI Lite X extends UPI’s offline functionality for small-ticket transactions on smart devices, while Bharat Connect acts as a cross-border payment bridge integrating forex settlement and compliance layers to support instant international transfers.
Relevant Question for Policy Stakeholders:
How can regulation, privacy safeguards, and financial literacy evolve in tandem to ensure that these advanced UPI features remain inclusive, secure, and equitable across all user segments?
Follow the full release here: RBI Deputy Governor Launches Digital-Payment Innovations at GFF 2025
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