Overview
- On Thursday Indian authorities put Alipay+’s January proposal to connect with the Unified Payments Interface on hold, citing national security concerns and questions about how customer data would be stored and used.
- Sources say the Ministry of External Affairs cited 'political grounds' for the pause and there is currently no clear path to approval.
- The planned integration would have allowed Indian travellers to use UPI at Alipay+ merchants overseas and later could have let foreign visitors pay in India, with Alipay+ claiming links to over 150 million merchants.
- Regulators and agencies including the RBI, NPCI/NIPL, finance and home ministries and law enforcement have raised worries about money-laundering, cyberfraud, dispute-resolution mechanisms and cross-border data flows.
- The decision reflects broader caution after the 2020 India–China border tensions and follows UPI’s selective overseas links with partners such as Singapore and the UAE, which could mean longer delays before UPI gains wider international reach and that travellers will keep relying on cards and banks for overseas payments.