by Claudia Segre
HUFFPOST – THE BLOGGER’S CORNER. From the geopolitics of oil to payment sovereignty
18 December 2025
In recent years, India has played an extremely sophisticated geopolitical game, maintaining a pragmatic balance between the West and Russia. After the invasion of Ukraine, New Delhi significantly increased its imports of Russian oil at discounted prices, strengthening an energy relationship that has its roots in the Cold War. But it would be reductive to view the relationship between India and Russia solely through the lens of raw materials. Alongside oil, there is growing, quieter but strategic cooperation on IT, cybersecurity, digital infrastructure, and payment systems, crucial areas in a world increasingly marked by sanctions, financial fragmentation, and the search for technological autonomy.
It is in this context that the success of UPI – Unified Payments Interface – should be understood, not only as a fintech case study, but as a real tool for economic and digital sovereignty. Launched in 2016 and regulated by the Reserve Bank of India, UPI is now the backbone of Indian digital payments, a public infrastructure that enables instant transfers between individuals and merchants through a simple digital identifier, at no cost to users or merchants. Above all, it has become the world leader in real-time payment processing, with 640 million transactions handled per day, compared to Visa’s 639 million.
The UPI model, which we are now seeing extend globally in a well-organised manner, is based on several key elements that explain its scalability: total interoperability between banks and applications, ease of use based on QR codes and PINs, integration with India’s public digital ecosystem, and a logic of digital public good rather than commercial product. Today, hundreds of banks are active on the platform, and millions of small merchants – from neighbourhood shops to large online marketplaces – use UPI as their daily payment standard.
The numbers tell the story of the phenomenon’s scope better than any slogan. In October 2025, UPI recorded over 20.7 billion monthly transactions worth more than US$325 billion, with significant year-on-year growth. Daily, the system handles hundreds of millions of transactions, making it one of the largest instant payment infrastructures in the world. It is no longer an emerging technology, but a mass platform, comparable in terms of reach and impact to the great infrastructure networks of the 20th century.
A particularly relevant aspect is the geographical spread of UPI. The data show strong adoption in the southern and western states of India, where the fintech ecosystem is more developed and per capita usage is high. At the same time, its penetration capacity in states with enormous demographic weight is striking, where UPI acts as a lever for financial inclusion through daily micropayments and transfers between individuals. This dual nature – a tool for advanced innovation and a mass infrastructure – is one of the main strengths of the Indian model.
However, there are also structural challenges. The scale achieved poses technological challenges related to system saturation at peak times, while the increase in digital fraud requires continuous investment in security and financial literacy. Added to this are questions about the economic model, based on free services, which puts pressure on banks and technology operators, and about governance and data protection in a system so central to the country’s economic life.
Yet it is precisely the ability to address these issues through progressive regulatory interventions that demonstrates the maturity of the path taken. UPI is not a static project, but an evolving infrastructure designed to integrate with new services such as recurring payments, digital credit, and international interoperability.
The final interpretation is strategic and geopolitical. With UPI, India has not simply digitised payments, but has built an exportable public infrastructure that is already accepted or interoperable in several countries. In an increasingly fragmented global context, where traditional payment systems are becoming instruments of geopolitical power, UPI emerges as an asset of soft power and a symbol of pragmatic digital sovereignty.
From Russian oil to payment platforms, India is redefining its global positioning with a consistent logic: strengthening autonomy, resilience, and influence. UPI is one of the most successful expressions of this, demonstrating that digital technology, when conceived as public infrastructure rather than private revenue, can become a decisive lever for development, inclusion, and strategic power.
