Author: Charitarth Sindhu, Fractional Business & AI Workflow Consultant
We asked eight industry leaders what Western payment companies should steal from the world’s two most successful real-time payment systems. Their answers point to a fundamental rethink of how money moves.
India’s UPI now processes over 21 billion transactions every month. Brazil’s Pix hit 178 million users in under five years. Meanwhile, America’s FedNow handles roughly 27,000 transactions per day. That gap is not a rounding error. It is a structural failure.
So what went right in New Delhi and Brasilia that went wrong in Washington and Brussels? We put a simple question to eight founders, operators, and executives across fintech, payments, and digital services: What can US and European fintechs learn from India’s UPI or Brazil’s Pix payment systems?
Their answers converged on a handful of core themes. Treat payment rails as public infrastructure. Make interoperability mandatory, not optional. Stop selling speed as a premium feature and start treating it as baseline. And above all, remove steps instead of adding them.
Interoperability is the foundation, not a feature
Every expert we spoke to landed on the same starting point. Both UPI and Pix succeeded because any bank or app can send money to any other bank or app. There are no walled gardens. There is no friction between providers.
In the US, Zelle cannot send to Venmo. Cash App cannot push to a traditional checking account in real time. Each closed loop forces users and businesses to maintain multiple accounts, multiple apps, and multiple workarounds. That fragmentation is a choice, not a technical limitation.
UPI solved this by making interoperability a condition of participation. Every bank that joins the network must accept payments from every app on the network. Brazil took a similar approach. The Central Bank mandated that every financial institution above a certain size must offer Pix. The result in both countries was explosive, universal adoption.
UPI and Pix show what happens when payments are treated like public infrastructure: open rails, real-time settlement, and a simple, consistent user experience that any bank or fintech can plug into. The biggest lesson for US and European fintechs is interoperability by default (common addressing like phone/email/QR, standardized APIs, and predictable rules) so users aren’t forced to choose “the right app” to pay someone. In practice, that drives network effects faster than closed-loop wallets, and it reduces failure points in checkout and P2P because routing and acceptance are standardized.
The second lesson is governance and incentives. Both systems pair strong central coordination (clear SLAs, fraud workflows, dispute standards, and certification) with competitive endpoints (banks and fintechs still differentiate on UX, credit, budgeting, merchant tools). From what we’ve seen in other regulated rails, fraud and trust don’t improve just by adding more authentication; they improve when participants share real-time signals, enforce consistent liability rules, and make consumer protections legible. Finally, pricing and access matter: low, transparent fees and broad eligibility bring small merchants and casual users into the system, which is what makes real-time payments feel “everyday” rather than “special.”
- Hans Graubard, COO & Cofounder, Happy V
At Remotify, we process cross-border payments for over 10,000 freelancers in dozens of countries. So I see the friction Western payment rails create every single day. When a freelancer in the Philippines invoices a client in Berlin, the money passes through multiple intermediaries, each taking a cut, each adding delay. That transaction could take three to five business days. On UPI or Pix, it would settle in seconds for close to nothing.
The biggest lesson Western fintechs should take from both systems is that interoperability is not a feature. It is the foundation. UPI works because any app can send money to any bank. Pix works because every institution above a certain size has to participate. In the US and Europe, we still have dozens of closed loops that do not talk to each other. Zelle cannot send to Venmo. Revolut cannot push to a US checking account in real time. Every closed loop is a wall that freelancers and small businesses have to pay someone to climb over.
The second lesson is about identity. Both UPI and Pix let you send money to a phone number or email instead of a 20-digit account number. That sounds small, but it changes everything for adoption. When we onboard freelancers who have never used digital payments before, the single biggest barrier is the complexity of routing numbers, IBANs, and SWIFT codes. Pix solved this on day one by letting people register a tax ID or phone number as their payment key. Western fintechs keep adding features on top of broken addressing systems instead of fixing the address layer itself.
- Hasan Can Soygök, Founder, Remotify
Simplicity scales. Complexity does not.
A recurring theme across these conversations was the power of simplicity. Both UPI and Pix stripped payments down to their most basic form. A QR code. A phone number. A confirmation in seconds. No downloads, no new accounts, no tutorials.
That design choice was deliberate. India did not try to teach a billion people how banking works. It gave them a QR code and a PIN. Brazil did not ask citizens to download a separate payments app. It plugged Pix into every banking app already on their phones. Both systems grew faster than any marketing campaign could have driven because the product itself was simpler than what it replaced.
For Western fintechs, this is a hard pill to swallow. The instinct is always to add features. But the evidence from both countries suggests the opposite approach wins. UPI’s paper QR codes work for street vendors who have never owned a card terminal. Pix keys let anyone pay with a phone number. Neither required merchants to buy new hardware.
US and European fintechs can learn from India’s UPI and Brazil’s Pix that simplicity and broad accessibility matter more than adding layers of complex features. Both systems took off because they made real-time payments easy, low cost, and available to everyone across banks and apps. Instead of creating fragmented solutions, they focused on interoperability and scale, so instant payments became the standard experience rather than a premium add-on. When payments are fast and effortless, adoption happens naturally.
Another important lesson is that strong payment infrastructure improves how businesses operate. UPI and Pix did not just modernise transactions; they improved cash flow speed, reduced friction, and helped small businesses manage money more efficiently. For fintechs in the US and Europe, the opportunity is to build payment solutions that are embedded into everyday workflows and that genuinely support better liquidity and automation. It is not only about moving money faster, but about making financial operations simpler and more flexible for businesses.
- David Grossman, Founder & Chief Growth Officer, Lessn
I run a digital agency, not a payments company. But I have watched UPI and Pix closely because they solved the same problem every tech platform faces: how do you get millions of people to change their behaviour?
The answer from both India and Brazil is the same. You remove steps instead of adding them. UPI did not try to educate a billion people on how banking works. It gave them a QR code and a phone number. Pix did not ask Brazilians to download a new app. It plugged into every banking app they already had. Both systems grew faster than any marketing campaign could have driven because the product itself was simpler than what it replaced.
For fintechs in the US and Europe, the lesson is not about payment rails or settlement speeds. It is about user behaviour. The companies that win will be the ones that make paying someone feel like sending a text message. No friction, no thinking, no steps you have to Google first. From building digital products at Otto Media and working on GiaAI with my US partner, I have seen the same pattern over and over. The tech that scales fastest is the tech that asks the least of the user. UPI and Pix proved that at national scale, and Western fintechs are still overcomplicating it.
- Callum Gracie, Founder, Gia AI
Real-time settlement belongs at the baseline, not behind a paywall
In most Western markets, instant payment still feels like a premium upgrade. Banks charge extra for same-day transfers. Card settlements can take one to three business days. Merchants wait days or even weeks to access their own revenue.
In India and Brazil, real-time settlement is just how payments work. There is no upgrade tier. There is no waiting period. Money moves in seconds, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
The US launched FedNow in July 2023 to close this gap. However, adoption has been sluggish. Around 1,500 institutions have joined so far, but that covers only about 15% of US financial institutions. Many signed up as receive-only participants. There is no consumer-facing app, no standardised QR codes, and no alias directory. Most importantly, participation is voluntary. In contrast, both UPI and Pix made participation effectively mandatory.
Europe sits somewhere in between. The EU’s Instant Payments Regulation now requires all eurozone banks to support instant payments. Yet SEPA Instant still accounts for only about 15% of credit transfers across Europe. National solutions like Sweden’s Swish, Spain’s Bizum, and Poland’s BLIK continue to operate in silos.
The technical playbook is largely understood. The harder challenge for US and European fintechs is adopting a different philosophy. UPI and Pix succeeded because they were designed as public infrastructure rather than competitive products. The goal was to build a layer that everyone could build on top of. That distinction changes everything about adoption speed, interoperability, and who gets included.
In the US, payment infrastructure has been shaped by incumbents with strong incentives to maintain friction. Card network fees persist because the entities that could eliminate them profit from them. Interbank transfers are slow because the institutions controlling the rails benefit from the float. Innovation happens at the edges but layers on top of the same slow, expensive foundation rather than replacing it.
Real-time settlement should be a baseline, not a premium feature. Pix made instant settlement the default. The US introduced FedNow, but adoption remains limited and the cultural expectation of instant settlement hasn’t shifted. The infrastructure exists. The mandate and the expectation don’t.
Interoperability needs to be designed in, not negotiated later. UPI works across every bank and payment app in India because interoperability was a condition of participation. In the US, getting users across different payment apps to transact directly remains unnecessarily complicated. That’s a design and political choice, not a technical limitation.
The inclusion gap is real too. Both UPI and Pix were explicitly built to reach populations without existing banking relationships. Western fintech design typically starts with the smartphone-native, banked consumer and works outward. The result is excellent products for people who already have options.
The deeper lesson is about infrastructure versus competition. The US and European approach has trusted private competition to eventually solve interoperability and inclusion. India and Brazil made a different bet: that certain layers are too important to leave entirely to private incentive. That bet has been validated by transaction volumes that dwarf what fragmented private systems produced.
Western fintechs can replicate many of these systems technically. The deeper shift is political, viewing payment rails as public infrastructure, like roads where value comes from universal access rather than controlled scarcity.
- Raj Baruah, Co-Founder, VoiceAIWrapper
The engineering blueprint matters too
Beyond the policy lessons, there are concrete technical patterns that Western fintechs can adopt today. Both systems standardise the user experience at the protocol level. QR code formats, real-time confirmation flows, and consistent pay-and-collect mechanisms are baked into the infrastructure. This means individual apps do not need to reinvent basic transfer mechanics. They compete on what sits on top: credit products, budgeting tools, fraud controls, and merchant services.
For engineering teams building payment-adjacent platforms, both systems offer a masterclass in reliability at scale. Strong idempotency prevents duplicate transactions. Real-time status callbacks keep all parties informed. Clear dispute and rollback rules reduce operational risk. Standardised message schemas across participants mean less custom integration work and fewer reconciliation headaches.
US and European fintechs can learn that “instant payments” only scale when the rails are treated like shared infrastructure, not a premium feature. UPI and Pix succeed because they’re interoperable by default (any bank/app can send to any other), use simple identifiers (phone/email/QR, not long account details), and have predictable, low-cost pricing. The biggest lesson is that the UX is standardized at the protocol level: QR formats, real-time confirmation, and a consistent “pay/collect” flow, so innovation happens on top (credit overlays, fraud controls, merchant tooling) rather than reinventing basic transfer mechanics in every app.
From an engineering perspective, it’s also a blueprint for building reliable, high-throughput systems: strong idempotency, real-time status callbacks, and clear dispute/rollback rules. When we build payment-adjacent platforms in .NET Core with SQL backends, the hard parts are always the same: exactly-once processing, reconciliation, and observability, so standardizing message schemas and settlement events across participants is what reduces operational risk. If Western markets want similar adoption, they’ll need more alignment on APIs, QR standards, and real-time settlement SLAs, plus fraud controls designed for “push payments” where irrevocability and social engineering are the main threats.
- Igor Golovko, Developer & Founder, TwinCore
Trust is psychological, not just technical
Several experts pointed to a lesson that goes beyond infrastructure and code. People trust payment systems that feel embedded in their national fabric. UPI became synonymous with digital payments in India. Pix became a verb in Brazil. Both systems feel like public utilities, not private products.
Western fintechs tend to focus on product-layer differentiation. Better interfaces, smarter features, slicker onboarding. But the evidence from both countries suggests that network scale and social normalisation matter more than any individual feature set. When your neighbour uses it, your corner shop accepts it, and your government pays benefits through it, adoption becomes self-reinforcing.
That does not mean interface design is irrelevant. Mexico’s CoDi had real-time infrastructure but failed to gain traction because of poor user experience and weak mandates. The lesson is that both scale and simplicity are necessary conditions. Neither alone is enough.
Being Partner at spectup, I think US and European fintechs should first understand that real payment innovation is not about technology sophistication but about lowering friction for everyday users. When I watch the success of Unified Payments Interface (UPI) in India, I see how powerful infrastructure-level simplicity can be when it is open and interoperable across banks and apps. The biggest lesson from UPI is that payments become mainstream when they feel invisible, meaning users should not think about payment mechanics while transacting.
Another strong signal comes from Pix (Brazilian instant payment system), which shows how government-led digital rails can accelerate adoption if designed correctly. European and US fintechs often focus on product-layer differentiation, but these systems show that network scale matters more than interface design. I sometimes tell founders that the best payment UX is the one where users finish the transaction before realising they were paying.
The Indian and Brazilian models also demonstrate the importance of real-time settlement as a default expectation rather than a premium feature. In many Western markets, instant payment still feels like an upgrade, while in emerging markets it is becoming the standard behaviour. I believe fintechs should stop selling speed as a feature and start treating it as baseline infrastructure.
Another lesson is that open ecosystem participation drives adoption faster than closed platform optimisation. UPI allowed multiple apps to compete on the same payment rail, which reduced user switching friction and increased innovation pressure. US and European fintechs could benefit from thinking more like network coordinators rather than isolated product providers.
Finally, the biggest insight is psychological, not technical. People trust systems that feel nationally embedded and socially normalised, even if the backend technology is not dramatically more advanced. If Western fintechs want similar success, they may need to focus more on ecosystem scale, policy collaboration, and everyday utility rather than only building feature-rich payment experiences.
- Niclas Schlopsna, Managing Partner, spectup
In looking at India’s UPI and Brazil’s Pix payment systems, we can draw several valuable lessons. Both platforms have enabled quick, seamless transactions with low costs, driving higher adoption rates. For example, India’s UPI boasts over 7 billion transactions monthly, showing how a user-friendly, secure, and widely accepted system can scale. Brazil’s Pix, launched in late 2020, grew to over 100 million users in just a year, highlighting the power of simplicity and accessibility.
From my experience at PuroClean, we’ve learned how critical it is to simplify processes and make systems accessible to a wide audience. Just like UPI and Pix, creating frictionless services that users can easily trust will drive engagement. For fintechs in the US and Europe, focusing on simplicity, security, and cost-effectiveness can help bridge gaps in financial inclusion. This approach not only improves customer experience but also accelerates market penetration.
- Logan Benjamin, Co-Founder, PuroClean
The bottom line
The message from these eight leaders is consistent. UPI and Pix did not succeed because of superior technology. They succeeded because governments treated payment rails as public infrastructure, mandated interoperability from day one, and made simplicity the design priority.
Western fintechs can borrow these principles without waiting for government mandates. Standardised QR codes for account-to-account payments need no regulation. Alias-based addressing via phone number or email is already technically feasible. Building on open protocols instead of proprietary rails is a strategic choice any company can make today.
However, the biggest gains require political will. Voluntary adoption of FedNow will not produce UPI-scale results. Fragmented national systems across Europe will not match Pix’s simplicity. The countries that treated payments as infrastructure got infrastructure-scale outcomes. The countries that left it to the market got market fragmentation.
The question for Western fintechs is whether they want to keep building premium features on top of broken foundations, or start fixing the foundations themselves.