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India loves a good origin story. And Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has quickly acquired one — a tale of indigenous brilliance, a technological moonshot, a quiet revolution that changed how a nation transacts.
But let us get one thing straight.
UPI was not a purely Indian invention; it was a uniquely Indian synthesis.
The ingredients were global.
The recipe, scale, governance model, and public utility orientation were distinctly Indian.
That distinction matters.
Because the genius of UPI does not lie in inventing something entirely new. It lies in doing something far harder — taking what the world already had and making it work for a billion people.
The Myth of Pure Invention
Real-time payments? Not new.
APIs? Not new.
QR codes? Not new.
Third-party payment initiation? Already seen elsewhere.
The world had all the pieces.
What India did was assemble them — intelligently, ruthlessly, and at scale.
Call it combinatorial innovation. Call it systems thinking. Or, if one must use a more earthy Indian phrase, call it jugaad — but not the sloppy, makeshift kind.
This is jugaad at national scale, engineered with precision.
What Makes UPI Different
UPI’s success is not about technology alone. Technology exists everywhere. Adoption does not.
What India got right was the architecture of trust, access, and scale.
* Interoperable public rails — not siloed private networks
* Open APIs — allowing anyone to build, innovate, disrupt
* Near-zero friction — no fees, no complexity, no barriers
* QR-led merchant acceptance — eliminating expensive hardware
* Bank + fintech coexistence — stability meets innovation
* Policy support — decisive, not hesitant
* Continuous iteration — a system that evolves, not ossifies
That combination produced something rare:
A payment system that is instant, interoperable, low-cost, mass-market, merchant-friendly, and embedded in daily life.
Not many countries can claim that — despite having superior capital, technology, and infrastructure.
The Uncomfortable Truth
UPI’s rise was not just design. It was also timing.
* A young, mobile-first population
* Rapid smartphone penetration
* Policy nudges — some gentle, some forceful
* Behavioural shifts post-demonetisation
* Aggressive competition among fintech players
In other words, this was not just engineering.
It was economics, sociology, policy, and psychology converging at the right moment.
And that part of the story is often glossed over.
The Cracks Beneath the Applause
UPI is a triumph — but not a finished one.
There are structural fault lines:
* QR fragmentation — interoperability is still incomplete
* Concentration risk — a handful of apps dominate the ecosystem
* Operational fragility — outages can ripple across the economy
* Zero MDR problem — free is popular, but not always sustainable
* Cyber vulnerability — scale attracts risk
A system that moves billions daily cannot afford complacency.
If UPI is India’s digital spine, then resilience is not optional — it is existential.
So, Is It Jugaad?
Here is the real answer.
If jugaad means quick fixes, shortcuts, and improvisation — then no, UPI is not that.
But if jugaad means the Indian ability to combine, adapt, simplify, and scale solutions under constraints — then UPI is perhaps the finest expression of it.
This is not jugaad as a compromise.
This is jugaad as capability.
The Final Word
India did not invent the wheel.
It built the highway — and then put a billion people on it.
And that, perhaps, is a higher form of genius.
UPI is not Indian genius of invention.
It is Indian genius of adaptation — executed at civilisational scale.
Mohan Murti
Advocate & International Industry Arbitrator
Former Managing Director-Europe
Reliance Industries Ltd, Germany
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.