UPI, PayNow tie-up: In payments, like geopolitics, India seeks a third way

Indian policy makers believe that the UPI and allied elements of what it calls "digital public infrastructure" are one of their biggest recent innovations

Last week, the Singaporean and Indian central banks unveiled a new system for cross-border cash transfers that, in New Delhi at least, was celebrated as something much more: the first step toward establishing an entirely new global payments system geared to the needs of the developing world. India’s Unified Payments Interface, or UPI, tied up with PayNow — run by a consortium of Singaporean banks — to provide what Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong described as “cross-border, real-time system linkage” with “cloud-based infrastructure.”
 

Indian policy makers believe that the UPI and allied elements of what it calls “digital public