Four years before Brazil launched PIX, India already had UPI, an instant payment system that today handles about 80% of the country's digital retail and helped transform fintechs like Razorpay into billion-dollar companies.

Four years before Brazil launched PIX, India already had UPI, an instant payment system that today handles about 80% of the country’s digital retail and helped transform fintechs like Razorpay into billion-dollar companies.

Written by Bruno Teles

Published on 09/06/2026 at 14:56

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Contrary to what some headlines say, India did not copy PIX, as its payment system was born in 2016, four years before the Brazilian one. UPI became a global reference and boosted fintechs like Razorpay, now valued at around 9 billion dollars and on its way to the stock market.

When Brazil launched PIX in November 2020, India had already been operating a very similar instant payment system, UPI, for four years. Created in 2016 by NPCI, the national payment corporation that operates the service, the Unified Payments Interface became the backbone of Indian digital transactions. According to data from NPCI itself and industry analyses, it now accounts for about 80% of digital retail payments in the country, and it was in this environment that billion-dollar fintechs like Razorpay emerged.

The chronological order dismantles an idea circulating in some headlines, that India copied PIX. In practice, it was the opposite, and the comparison between the two systems was even the subject of an industry event in São Paulo, where an NPCI executive went so far as to call UPI the older brother of PIX, according to reports from the specialized press. Founded in 2014, Razorpay took advantage of this wave of digital payments and is now valued in the billions of dollars, on its way to going public.

India did not copy PIX, and the timeline explains

UPI, India's payment system, was born in 2016, before PIX, moves 80% of digital retail and made the fintech Razorpay a company valued in billions. — **The confusion starts with the date.**

UPI was launched in April 2016 by NPCI, under the supervision of the Indian central bank, according to records from the entity itself.

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How the payment system that drives Indian retail works

Essentially, UPI works like the PIX that Brazilians know.

It is a real-time payment system, available 24 hours a day, that allows direct transfers between bank accounts via mobile phone, with low or no cost to the user.

According to data from NPCI and comparative analyses, such as that from the American institute ORF, the tool accounts for about 80% of digital payments in Indian retail, reaching 85% of total digital transactions in some surveys.

The biggest difference compared to PIX is in the architecture.

UPI is an open and decentralized system, where NPCI defines the tracks and dozens of bank and fintech apps build solutions on them.

PIX, on the other hand, is centralized and operated directly by the Brazilian central bank.

This open model in India has created space for an industry of companies that process payments, integrate online stores, and connect payment methods, and this is where Razorpay comes in.

Razorpay and the payment fintech frenzy

Razorpay was founded in 2014 by Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar, two engineers who met at the Roorkee Institute of Technology.

According to the company’s history and reports from the specialized site TechCrunch, the duo claims to have been rejected by more than a hundred banks before being accepted into the American accelerator Y Combinator, which unlocked the first partnerships.

The company started as a payment gateway for online stores and has transformed into a complete financial services platform for businesses.

Today the company goes far beyond operating a payment system.

Over the years, it launched business account services, credit, payroll, recurring charges, and financial automation, in what the company’s president describes as a financial operating system for businesses.

According to the market data platform Tracxn, Razorpay has raised about 741 million dollars, close to 3.8 billion reais, from funds like Y Combinator, Tiger Global, Peak XV (formerly Sequoia Capital India), GIC, Mastercard, and Salesforce Ventures.

Billion-dollar valuation, billionaire founders, and an IPO on the horizon

The appreciation followed the growth of this payment system company, but with ups and downs.

In 2021, Razorpay was valued at 7.5 billion dollars, as reported at the time by TechCrunch. In 2025, according to the Tracxn platform, this number rose to about 9.2 billion dollars, something close to 48 billion reais at the current exchange rate.

The trajectory transformed Mathur and Kumar into two of the youngest billionaires in India, according to the business press.

The next chapter is the stock market, and it brings a note of caution.

In 2025, Razorpay moved its headquarters from the United States back to India, a necessary step for a public offering in the Indian market, scheduled for the end of 2026.

Reports from the Indian press, such as Business Today, and the Reuters agency indicate, however, that the valuation at the stock market debut is expected to be more modest, in the range of 5 to 6 billion dollars, below the peak of the private market.

It is a reminder that the value of a fintech among private investors does not always hold up in the open market.

The case of UPI and Razorpay shows that Brazil and India have followed similar paths, at different times.

More than finding out who copied whom, the comparison helps to understand how an instant, cheap, and easy-to-use payment system can reshape a country’s economy and create a new generation of technology companies.

India came first, Brazil accelerated quickly, and both became world references on the subject.

And you, did you know that the Indian UPI is older than PIX, or had you also heard that India might have copied the Brazilian system? Do you think PIX could give rise to billion-dollar fintechs like Razorpay in Brazil? Leave your opinion in the comments, respecting different opinions, and share this article with those interested in technology and economics.

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Four years before Brazil launched PIX, India already had UPI, an instant payment system that today handles about 80% of the country’s digital retail and helped transform fintechs like Razorpay into billion-dollar companies.

Contrary to what some headlines say, India did not copy PIX, as its payment system was born in 2016, four years before the Brazilian one. UPI became a global reference and boosted fintechs like Razorpay, now valued at around 9 billion dollars and on its way to the stock market.

India did not copy PIX, and the timeline explains

How the payment system that drives Indian retail works

Razorpay and the payment fintech frenzy

Billion-dollar valuation, billionaire founders, and an IPO on the horizon

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Four years before Brazil launched PIX, India already had UPI, an instant payment system that today handles about 80% of the country’s digital retail and helped transform fintechs like Razorpay into billion-dollar companies.

Contrary to what some headlines say, India did not copy PIX, as its payment system was born in 2016, four years before the Brazilian one. UPI became a global reference and boosted fintechs like Razorpay, now valued at around 9 billion dollars and on its way to the stock market.

India did not copy PIX, and the timeline explains

How the payment system that drives Indian retail works

Razorpay and the payment fintech frenzy

Billion-dollar valuation, billionaire founders, and an IPO on the horizon

Dissatisfied with seeing people sleeping on the street, a man named Ryan Donais started building small mobile homes so that homeless people can escape the cold, each equipped with a bed, running water, electricity, and heating.

Workers were opening a modern road in Dover when they found, 6 meters below the asphalt, a 3,500-year-old boat made of stitched oak and plant fibers.

A giant brown band visible from space, approximately 8,850 kilometers long, connected Africa to America in the Atlantic Ocean, and satellites revealed that it is neither land nor pollution, but the largest accumulation of seaweed in the world, which broke records in 2025.

Engineers want to carve through Africa with a giant canal to bring water from the world’s second-largest river to a dying lake on the edge of the Sahara Desert that has already lost 90% of its water.

Panama bets on a $4.5 billion railway bridge over the Panama Canal and calls on Renfe to validate a 450 km high-speed line that promises 50,000 jobs, but still faces the technical challenge of crossing one of the world’s most strategic routes.

Consumers eat six times more chicken than in the 1960s, global meat supply quadruples in 60 years, and FAO report reveals the invisible cost on the plate: livestock could drive 80% of the increase in agricultural emissions over the next decade.

Using high-resolution satellite images, archaeologists rediscovered the Egyptian city of Imet, buried for centuries in the Nile Delta, revealing rare multi-story houses, granaries, and a sacred road linked to the cobra goddess Wadjet, from about 2,400 years ago.

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