NPCI International Payments Limited (NIPL), the international arm of the National Payments Corporation of India, and National Interbank Processing Centre JSC (NIPC), which runs Uzbekistan's national payment system Humo, signed a commercial agreement on 30 August 2026 covering UPI acceptance in Uzbekistan. The announcement came in Tashkent, during the Indian prime minister's visit. The agreement opens payment at an Uzbek merchant from an Indian app, by reading the country's national QR code.
A merchant acceptance agreement
The agreement covers person-to-merchant payments, which NPCI calls P2M. The Indian visitor pays by scanning UZQR, the national interoperable QR code that sits on the unified infrastructure set up by the Central Bank of Uzbekistan, from the UPI app already installed at home. The stated scope covers retail, hospitality and services; person-to-person transfers between the two countries are not included.
Two arrangements coexist in the internationalisation of UPI. The first opens acceptance: the Indian app reads the national code of the country visited, and only payment at a merchant is covered. The second links two instant credit transfer systems, which also opens person-to-person transfers. The agreement signed with NIPC is of the first kind.
- Payment at an Uzbek merchant by scanning the UZQR code
- Indian UPI apps already installed, with no local account to open
- Retail, hospitality and services covered by the national code
- Indian tourists, business travellers and students addressed first
The designation by the two central banks
The agreement followed formal approvals from both countries' regulators, the Reserve Bank of India and the Central Bank of Uzbekistan. The latter designated Humo as NIPL's authorised partner for cross-border merchant acceptance. That designation gives one named national operator the job of routing inbound payments, and sets the entry point through which orders from India will reach Uzbek merchants.
Before this agreement, the Indian standard was accepted in ten countries: Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, France, Mauritius, Nepal, Bhutan, Qatar, Sri Lanka, Cambodia and Greece.
What the arrangement does not yet state
- The launch date, which neither party has given
- The UPI apps covered at launch, and whether all of them will be
- The foreign exchange and settlement terms between the two systems
- The fee borne by the Uzbek merchant
- Whether Uzbek cardholders travelling to India get the same in return
A corridor still to be sized
Neither NIPL nor NIPC has published an estimate of how many Indian visitors are concerned, or of the payment volume expected. The agreement does not change how Uzbek residents pay: they keep using the national code with their own apps. It adds a foreign source of payment orders to an acceptance scheme already in place, which is why the rollout depends mainly on connecting the Indian apps rather than on equipping merchants.