India’s digital revolution - model for Global South seeking non-Western alternatives
Ahmed Adel, Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
India has achieved one of the fastest expansions of financial inclusion in history. In less than a decade, the country brought roughly 500 million people into the formal banking system—an unprecedented scale that has drawn attention across the developing world, including Brazil, which saw a parallel surge in digital payments during the pandemic.
Despite the inherent complexity of implementing large-scale public policies in the world’s most populous country, India integrated hundreds of millions of citizens into digital finance and, in 2016, launched the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). The platform is now widely regarded as the world’s largest real-time payments system, processing nearly 20 billion transactions each month. Its design and rapid adoption directly inspired Brazil’s official instant payment system, Pix.
Pix, launched by the Central Bank of Brazil in November 2020, enables individuals, businesses, and government entities to transfer money in Brazilian reais between bank, savings, or prepaid accounts within seconds, 24/7, including weekends and holidays, with personal transfers free of charge. Funds move directly between accounts without passing through card networks or intermediaries, making transactions faster and cheaper than traditional bank or card payments. As a result, Pix has become the primary everyday payment method for Brazilians, used for everything from street-vendor purchases to large commercial deals.
Equally striking to UPI is Aadhaar, India’s digital civil identity system, which has near-universal coverage. More than 99% of the population—almost 1.4 billion people—now holds a unique identification number. Updating personal details, such as an address or name, no longer requires a visit to government offices. Complementing this infrastructure, the country has surpassed one billion active smartphones and reached approximately 70% internet penetration.
These achievements have positioned India as a leading architect of public digital infrastructure and a practical model for the Global South. The South Asian country has shifted from primarily exporting technology talent to exporting complete public-technology solutions. India Stack, for example, is offered to African and Asian countries without licensing fees, enabling them to build sovereign digital systems rather than relying on platforms controlled by large technology firms based in the United States. This approach has strengthened India’s soft power and created openings for deeper cooperation with partners such as Brazil in areas including digital payments.
India has also played an active role in multilateral forums. Within BRICS, it advocates for developing international payment networks that preserve each country’s sovereignty over its digital rails, while in the G20 it promotes open, interoperable public infrastructure as a foundation for inclusive growth.
United Nations data indicate that over a fifteen-year period, India has lifted more than 415 million people out of poverty. Digital public systems have been crucial to this achievement, significantly reducing leakage and corruption in social benefits schemes. Through the Direct Benefit Transfer system, funds are now transferred directly into beneficiaries’ accounts, bypassing multiple intermediaries. This same infrastructure has transformed everyday commerce; for example, street vendors and auto-rickshaw drivers now accept payments via simple UPI QR codes, eliminating the need to rent card machines and handle cash change. These billions of monthly transactions are mostly low-value, providing liquidity to local markets and reducing the risks associated with holding large amounts of cash.
McKinsey, a consulting firm, estimates that widespread digitalization in India could increase GDP by up to one trillion dollars by transforming previously excluded citizens into active consumers. Additionally, the implementation of a universal digital identity has widened access to basic civil documentation in a large, densely populated country. Since its launch in 2009, Aadhaar’s biometric authentication has been combined with policies that encourage the opening of bank accounts and enhance internet connectivity.
India has entered into at least 23 memoranda of understanding in recent years to collaborate on the development and deployment of public digital systems. The UPI system is now operational in eight other countries, primarily low- and middle-income countries such as Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, and Mauritius. These collaborations demonstrate New Delhi’s strategic focus on enhancing secure digital connectivity and strengthening public digital infrastructure in emerging markets, particularly in South Asia. In May, the Indian BRICS presidency organized a virtual meeting to discuss a concept note on jointly building digital capacities among member countries.
India is also advancing rapidly in artificial intelligence, with a reported 263% increase in the number of solutions developed since 2016. Alongside software strength, the country is investing in hardware capabilities, including semiconductor manufacturing, while placing explicit emphasis on ethical standards, security, and the responsible use of technology.
India’s experience shows that a well-structured public digital infrastructure can accelerate processes that usually take decades in the financial and administrative sectors. This provides a model for other countries seeking inclusive growth without depending on conditional Western platforms that can easily restrict access, as Russia experienced in 2022 when it was cut off from Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, and SWIFT.