Overview
- At the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, Emmanuel Macron praised India’s “India Stack,” citing a digital identity covering 1.4 billion people, UPI handling about 20 billion transactions a month, and 500 million digital health IDs.
- He cast the platforms as drivers of inclusion, invoking a Mumbai street vendor who now accepts instant, free phone payments after previously lacking access to banking.
- Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced a $15 billion infrastructure program that includes a full-stack AI hub in Visakhapatnam with gigawatt-scale compute and a new international subsea cable gateway.
- Prime Minister Narendra Modi said UPI enabled seamless online transactions under challenging circumstances and helped bridge the digital divide.
- The Congress party, via spokesperson Pawan Khera, disputed Modi’s claim to credit for UPI, citing NPCI’s IMPS launch in 2010, Nilekani-led conception in 2012–2013, and core architecture work in 2013–2014 during the UPA era.