Zimbabwe may use India’s UPI stack to transform African payments system: Report

Mumbai: Zimbabwe is in talks with NPCI International Payments Ltd (NIPL) -- the arm of India’s National Payments Corporation of India -- to licence the technology behind the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) as a shared domestic rail for real‑time payments, a new report has said.

Such a domestic rail would enable banks, mobile-money operators and fintechs to clear transfers in real time on one public layer, the report from India Narrative said.

Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor John Mushayavanhu said the move could cut costs, speed transfers and create an account-to-account alternative to cards for small domestic transactions.

Cross‑border use and remittance links could follow, said Mushayavanhu and negotiations with NPCI International Payments Ltd (NIPL) could be concluded by October 31. NIPL is the overseas arm of India’s National Payments Corporation that has exported UPI‑style infrastructure to other countries.

Zimbabwe already processes large volumes of digital transactions but lacks a low‑cost common rail. Zimbabwe's national system handled 238 million electronic transactions in Q4 2025, with mobile money accounting for about 87 per cent of the volume and active mobile‑financial‑services users near 11 million.

"Diaspora inflows reached $2.45 billion in 2025, up from $2.15 billion in 2024, about $6.7 million a day. Britain and South Africa each supplied a little over a quarter of the early-2025 flow. Those dollars are household income and foreign exchange, second only to mining," the report noted.

“The World Bank estimated sub-Saharan Africa’s average cost of sending $200 near 8 per cent in 2025, against a global average of about 6.5 per cent and a Sustainable Development Goal target of 3 per cent,” it added.

The cost through Southern African Development Community (SADC) routes is even higher, the report said, adding that the money leaked by intermediaries is food and working capital lost for African natives.

UPI handled roughly 49 per cent of global real-time payment volumes in 2025 and 84 per cent of India’s own digital payments in the last fiscal year, as per government data.

Ghana, Uganda, Rwanda and Mozambique have already signalled interest in collaboration with NPCI, it said, adding that the first movers will set the standards for the rest to inherit.

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