As India’s Digital Payments Go Global, Authentication Faces Its Biggest Test Yet

India’s digital payments story is no longer a domestic narrative. With cross-border UPI transactions rising more than twenty-fold in just a year—jumping from 37,060 transactions in FY24 to 7.55 lakh in FY25—the country is shaping the conversation around real-time and inclusive global payments. But this rapid scale has also produced a new wave of risk. Digital payment frauds in India grew 85% last year, resulting in losses exceeding ₹4,245 crore across 2.4 million cases.

For Tapesh Bhatnagar, Head of Digital Solutions at Giesecke+Devrient (G+D), the scale of this shift is unmistakable. “The speed of digital payments has outpaced the evolution of authentication,” he says. “The challenge now is building security layers that match the velocity at which India is innovating.”

G+D, a 172-year-old security technology company headquartered in Munich, has been present in India for over two ...