‘No cash, no complications’: Raghav Chadha highlights UPI-UZQR link for Indians in Uzbekistan

Indian travellers in Uzbekistan could make direct payments from their bank accounts by scanning shop QR codes under a planned link between India’s Unified Payments Interface and Uzbekistan’s UZQR system. Rajya Sabha member Raghav Chadha highlighted the connection while speaking at the 12th Inter-Parliamentary Union Global Conference of Young Parliamentarians in Samarkand.

Chadha had been nominated to represent India’s Parliament at the conference, held from September 4 to September 6. He presented UPI as a model of digital inclusion and said India viewed digital rights through four pillars: access, agency, safety and opportunity.

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be a bridge and not a divider

He said the Digital India Initiative, launched in 2015, rested on the belief that technology should “be a bridge and not a divider.” Chadha also said the cost of 1 GB of data had fallen from Rs. 269 in 2014 to Rs. 8, a reduction of 97 percent.

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belongs to no bank or technology company

Describing UPI as an example of user agency, he said the payment system “belongs to no bank or technology company.” He said UPI processed more than 240 billion transactions worth ₹314 trillion in the 2025-26 financial year, compared with 90,000 transactions in its first month after its 2016 launch.

Chadha also referred to privacy protections and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act. On opportunity, he said young people with skills and technology could become creators, innovators and leaders, and argued that digital rights should apply equally to young women using the cheapest phones in the poorest districts.

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The test of this era will not be how clever our machines have become, it will be whether the young women with the cheapest phone in the poorest district gets the same data protection, same data access and the same digital rights as everybody else