NPCI International Payments Limited (NIPL), the international arm of the National Payments Corporation of India, signed a commercial agreement on August 30, 2026, with National Interbank Processing Centre JSC (NIPC), which runs Uzbekistan’s HUMO national payment system, to bring UPI acceptance to Uzbekistan. Indian users will be able to pay Uzbek merchants from their UPI apps by scanning the country’s national QR code. The deal was announced in Tashkent during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit. Both countries’ central banks have approved it, but no launch date has been made public.
Indian apps will scan Uzbekistan’s national QR code
The agreement covers person-to-merchant payments, which NPCI calls P2M. Indian visitors pay by scanning UZQR, the national interoperable QR code built on the unified infrastructure set up by the Central Bank of Uzbekistan, from the UPI app they already use at home. The partnership “enables Indian travellers to scan Uzbekistan’s national interoperable QR code UZQR using their familiar UPI-enabled applications to make instant merchant payments across the country,” India’s Finance Ministry said. The announced scope covers retail, hospitality, and services. Person-to-person transfers between the two countries are not included.
UPI’s international expansion follows two models. The first opens acceptance only: the Indian app reads the national QR code of the country visited, and only merchant payments are covered. The second links two instant payment systems, which also enables person-to-person transfers. The NIPC deal follows the first model.
- Payments at Uzbek merchants by scanning the UZQR code
- Existing Indian UPI apps, with no local account to open
- Retail, hospitality, and service merchants covered by the national code
- Indian tourists, business travelers, and students targeted first
Uzbekistan’s central bank named HUMO as the entry point
The agreement was executed after formal approvals from both countries’ regulators, the Reserve Bank of India and the Central Bank of Uzbekistan. The Uzbek central bank designated HUMO as NIPL’s authorized partner for cross-border merchant acceptance. That designation assigns the routing of inbound payments to a single named national operator and sets the entry point through which payment orders from India will reach Uzbek merchants.
Before this agreement, UPI was accepted in 10 countries: Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, France, Mauritius, Nepal, Bhutan, Qatar, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, and Greece.
Launch date, apps, and fees are still unknown
- The launch date, which neither party has disclosed
- Which UPI apps will support it at launch, and whether all of them will
- How currency conversion and settlement will work between the two systems
- The fee paid by Uzbek merchants
- Whether Uzbek cardholders traveling to India will get a reciprocal service
No one has sized the corridor yet
Neither NIPL nor NIPC has published an estimate of how many Indian visitors the service could reach or how much in payments it might carry. The agreement does not change how Uzbek residents pay: they keep using the national QR code with their own apps. It adds a foreign source of payment orders to an acceptance network that already exists, so the rollout depends mainly on connecting Indian apps, not on equipping merchants.