The CEO of Ppro, a payments infrastructure provider based in the United Kingdom, told Nikkei Asia that the fintech unicorn is seeing increased demand for cross-border payments and wants to “actively” consider entering Japan.
Ppro formed a partnership with the international arm of the National Payments Corporation of India last week, which is the owner of United Payments Interface (UPI), the country’s real-time payments system that processes 60% of all domestic payments. This was Ppro’s first venture into India.

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Over 325 million people use UPI, which was launched in 2016 and supports 100 third-party apps like Google Pay, PhonePe, and Paytm as well as 390 banks.
In a recent online interview, Ppro CEO Simon Black stated, “We are going to accelerate the international adoption of UPI as a payment mechanism for cross-border e-commerce into India.” We hope to expand our presence [in India].”

Users of Ppro will have access to India’s dominant real-time payments system in the coming months. This system has revolutionized how locals pay at stores and send money to others.
Pro, which was established in 2006, helps e-commerce and online services accept various payment methods. It currently has offices in Singapore and Australia in Asia-Pacific.

Black claims that transactions with other payment service providers, or PSPs, such as PayPal, Stripe, and Global Payments, which assist business owners and merchants in accepting a wide range of online payment methods, account for the majority of the company’s revenue.

While PSPs connect with various instalment techniques all alone, Ppro likewise interfaces PSPs to other instalment choices and to various districts. ” That speeds up their speed to market to offer different nearby instalment techniques and decreases their work on a continuous premise,” Dark said.

According to the state-owned India Brand Equity Foundation, e-commerce in India is anticipated to reach an estimated $111 billion in 2024 and then almost double to $200 billion by 2026. Ppro’s partnership with NPCI International Payments will enable its users to support e-commerce payments.

Right now, most organizations need to set up an actual substance in India to interface with UPI, causing huge expenses and time. Through Ppro, merchants and PSPs will be able to connect directly to UPI without establishing a legal entity or a settlements mechanism with an India-based bank.

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Black stated that the business will “continue to invest in” Asia, the “fastest-growing” region, in the future. The majority of Ppro transactions currently originate from Western markets. Asia] is

developing from a more modest base, yet it’s where we see presumably the greatest development potential,” Dark said.
“I think a nation we’re not in today, which we’re investigating effectively, is Japan,” he added. ” We anticipate expanding our presence not only in the nations in which we currently operate but also to include additional nations in the region.