Pine Labs and Sri Lanka-based payment platform WEBXPAY have gone live with a cross-border payments partnership that enables Indian payment methods, including UPI, UPI AutoPay, net banking across more than 100 banks, major card networks, EMI conversions and Credit on UPI, to be accepted at Sri Lankan merchants. The arrangement is described by the two companies as the first Payment Aggregator-to-Payment Aggregator collaboration under India’s Reserve Bank of India-authorised PA-CB framework.

The PA-CB (Payment Aggregator Cross-Border) structure allows licensed Indian payment aggregators to partner directly with international counterparts, routing Indian payment rails into overseas markets within a regulated framework. Settlement operates on a T+1 basis, and the integration is embedded within WEBXPAY’s existing merchant infrastructure, meaning Sri Lankan businesses do not need to rework their payment stack to go live.

Why the framework matters

The PA-CB framework is a meaningful regulatory development in India’s approach to internationalising its payments infrastructure. Rather than requiring individual bilateral arrangements at the bank level, it creates a standardised pathway for licensed aggregators to extend their rails outward. The result is that a product like UPI, which processed billions of domestic transactions and achieved near-universal merchant penetration in India, can now be offered in international markets through a compliant, scalable wrapper rather than an ad hoc technical integration.

Tanya Naik, senior executive vice president and head of online business at Pine Labs, said the company intends to replicate the model across Southeast Asia and every market where Indian travellers and consumers represent a significant commercial force. Sri Lanka is the first activation under this framework, with further markets signalled but not yet named.

Thilak Piyadigama, executive chairman of WEBXPAY, framed the commercial case directly: “Indian customers already know and trust payment methods such as UPI, cards and net banking. Bringing that familiarity into the online checkout experience of Sri Lankan merchants can remove a significant point of friction and help businesses convert more Indian demand into revenue.”

Market context and competitive read-across

The timing reflects genuine commercial logic. Sri Lanka received more than 530,000 Indian tourists in 2025, making India the country’s largest source market by volume, and that flow is continuing into 2026. Checkout abandonment driven by unfamiliar payment options is a well-documented problem in cross-border travel commerce, and the completion-rate uplift from presenting a recognised domestic payment method is measurable rather than theoretical.

More broadly, this partnership sits within a wider competition to extend UPI’s geographic reach. The National Payments Corporation of India has already pursued bilateral UPI acceptance agreements across the Gulf, Southeast Asia and parts of Europe, typically through interoperability arrangements rather than the PA-CB structure. The Pine Labs model is distinct in that it operates through a licensed aggregator layer rather than a direct interoperability link, which may prove easier to scale commercially across markets where NPCI has not yet formalised a bilateral deal.

For WEBXPAY, whose merchant base spans hospitality, travel, retail and online commerce, the partnership adds a high-intent consumer segment with an existing preference for specific payment rails. The commercial risk is largely on the Indian side: Pine Labs is taking on the regulatory overhead of PA-CB compliance and the settlement infrastructure required to make T+1 work across two currencies.

The partnership is explicitly positioned as a template. Whether the model can be replicated in higher-complexity markets, where local regulation, currency controls or incumbent payment networks create more friction, will determine whether PA-CB becomes a meaningful internationalisation vehicle or remains a niche corridor product.

The post Pine Labs and WEBXPAY Launch UPI Acceptance Across Sri Lanka appeared first on The Fintech Times.