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Informist, Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2025

 

By Aaryan Khanna

 

MUMBAI - The National Payments Corp. of India's international arm and the European Central Bank have begun work on the interoperability between their respective fast payments systems, according to Alexandre Stervinou, director at the Banque de France. This would allow for interlinking payments between India's Unified Payments Interface and Europe's TARGET Instant Payment Settlement, the French central banker told Informist Tuesday at the Global Fintech Fest 2025 here. 

 

Stervinou, who is part of the Cash and Retail Payments Policy and Oversight Directorate, said interoperability will take some time as the concerned teams have just begun work on the technological transfer. Still, he was confident the two payments system will find a middle point and the technologies will become compatible, especially considering the scale and maturity of India's UPI, Stervinou said.

 

On the central bank digital currency front, Stervinou said the digital euro was ready for launch and was just awaiting legislative approval. He said the ECB's digital currency was a matter of sovereignty for the European Union. However, the focus of regulators in Europe is to make the system robust for domestic payments rather than cross-border transaction in its first stage, the French central banker said.

 

According to Stervinou, only 10% of Europe's payments are cross-border transactions, either within Europe or the rest of the world, making it a lower priority for the central bank. Reserve Bank of India Deputy Governor T. Rabi Sankar Tuesday said India was waiting for other central bank digital currencies to develop before testing the use of the e-rupee, India's central bank digital currency, in cross-border trade. Sankar has said that lower-cost and frictionless cross-border transactions are the best use case for the e-rupee.

 

Earlier Tuesday, Banque de France Governor Francois Villeroy de Galhau reportedly expressed support for an end-to-end tie-up between the two systems. India's UPI has been used in France for some merchant payments since February 2024, including at the Eiffel Tower.

 

In India, there were 19.63 billion UPI transactions, worth INR 24.90 trillion, in September alone -– both slightly off record highs hit earlier this year. Cross-border transactions on the Unified Payments Interface began in FY22 when Singapore linked its fast payment system, PayNow, with it. Between April and July, over 600,000 cross-border transactions took place using the UPI, with a total value of INR 1.69 billion.  End

 

Edited by Vandana Hingorani

 

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