Pulkit Ahuja, Founder & CEO of Proxgy, said the next phase of growth will depend on making digital payments more inclusive while strengthening trust frameworks.
“As India strengthens the security framework around QR-based digital payments and builds greater global trust in UPI, the key opportunity ahead is to make these systems more straightforward and accessible for first-time users as well as underserved communities,” he said.
He added that accessibility at the last mile remains critical.
“At Proxgy, we have always believed that digital payments should not be limited by smartphone availability and must be designed to reach the last mile. That is why we built ThumbPay. The idea was to make payments simple by using biometric ID checks. You pay with your thumb. No cards, no cash, and no phone required,” Ahuja said.
He further noted that integrating identity-based verification can improve both security and usability across regions with limited digital access.
“When Aadhaar-based verification is integrated with UPI infrastructure, it not only enhances security but also improves ease of use for rural populations, elderly citizens, and regions with limited digital access,” he said.
On global expansion, Edul Patel, Founder & CEO of Mudrex, said India’s QR-led payments model is already gaining international traction. “India’s QR-based payments ecosystem, anchored by UPI, is a global benchmark. This is a payments infrastructure that India built for itself and is now actively exporting to the world. Cross-border UPI transaction volumes have also risen driven by successful global partnerships forged by the government of India and the Reserve Bank of India,” he said.
However, he pointed to regulatory fragmentation as a key constraint. “The challenge with global payments has never really been technology. It is the regulatory and compliance patchwork that sits beneath it,” Patel said, adding that interoperability across jurisdictions will be central to scaling UPI globally.
He also highlighted that emerging settlement technologies could complement existing rails. “Traditional cross-border transfers remain slow and costly, whereas blockchain-based systems enable near-instant settlement. These are not competing systems, but complementary layers in the evolving global payments architecture,” he said.
