A UPI payment looks instant. When one fails, getting the money back can take days.
The delay is not a flaw in the app. As Ashish Singhal, co-founder and CEO of CoinSwitch, points out, it sits in the back office, where banks must reconcile separate ledgers before funds come back. The same layered machinery lies beneath international payments, where correspondent banks, messaging networks and multiple rounds of reconciliation must all agree before money finally moves.
Blockchain’s pitch is to replace that patchwork with a shared, synchronised ledger used by participating institutions. Distributed ledger technology (DLT), its backers argue, could simplify reconciliation, shorten settlement delays and remove some intermediaries. As the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) explores international uses of its central bank digital currency (CBDC), the digital rupee could one day sit inside such an interoperable architecture, letting countries settle with each other more directly. But can the technology change the mechanics of international finance, or will it become another layer on top of an old system?
Conversations with Mridul Gupta, Founding Partner at CoinDCX, and Ashish Singhal, Co-founder and CEO of CoinSwitch, at India Blockchain Week in Mumbai on November 1–2, 2026, offer two complementary views of the opportunity and its limits.
Their answers converge on one point. Blockchain can make payments more efficient. It cannot, on its own, make the rupee a global currency.
The revolution is in the back office
Conventional international transactions pass through multiple intermediaries, each keeping its own ledger and reconciling separately before funds finally move. It helps to separate SWIFT from settlement: SWIFT is a messaging network that carries instructions between banks. It does not move or settle the money. Blockchain’s larger proposition is to change how institutions record, verify and settle.
Singhal argues that is where the bigger change lies, and it is one customers would barely see. “Blockchain is more of a back-end revolution than a front-end revolution,” he says.
A shared ledger, he argues, could let banks reconcile in real time, shrinking the days-long clean-up behind failed payments. The customer’s screen would look the same. The architecture beneath it would not.
Common rails, different rulebooks
Taking the idea across borders is harder. Jurisdictions differ in regulation, banking arrangements and monetary policy, and connecting them takes more than shared software.
Singhal’s answer is compatible standards. “What if the technology rails were common across those countries?” he asks.
If countries such as Singapore and Thailand adopted compatible infrastructure, he argues, integrating their financial systems would become considerably easier. “Building on common infrastructures gives you the ability that your technology on day one itself is global,” he says.
For sovereign CBDCs, though, control matters. Singhal favours private blockchain networks over public ones, arguing that governments must retain control of their monetary systems, particularly in countries such as India where capital controls remain relevant.
Gupta cautions against treating blockchain as the only road to interoperability. “Blockchain only helps solve one aspect of it,” he says, referring to governance, reconciliation and monitoring around financial transactions.
Conventional infrastructure can also deliver interoperability; blockchain’s edge is that it could make integration between currency ecosystems more seamless. A common ledger can simplify the plumbing. It cannot settle differences in foreign exchange rules, liquidity arrangements or regulatory obligations.
Faster is not the same as stronger
The harder question is whether a blockchain-enabled settlement network could loosen India’s reliance on dollar-centric financial infrastructure. Gupta is blunt: technology is not the answer. “Blockchain will not change the nature of how a country or how a currency is accepted,” he says.
Internationalising the rupee, for him, is an economic challenge: more bilateral trade, stronger exports and wider demand for Indian products and services. “What is needed is more bilateral agreements. What is needed is more exports from India. What is needed is more Make in India,” he says.
Singhal agrees, from the payments side. “I don’t think it would have any impact on dollar dependency,” he says, arguing that blockchain would offer a more efficient alternative route for international transactions, not remove the underlying demand for cross-border payments.
This is the weak joint in the de-dollarisation story around digital currencies. Direct settlement between institutions does not change the currency in which trade is priced, or the liquidity businesses need to manage foreign exchange exposure. A faster pipe does not make a stronger currency.
The rulebook technology cannot write
Both executives see another use: tokenising assets such as real estate, financial securities and agricultural financing, where fractional ownership could open new ways to fund them. Gupta flags a problem no code can solve: establishing the legal relationship between an underlying asset and its digital representation.
Singhal makes a similar point. “If it’s a token, then that token needs to have the same legal rights,” he says.
He believes the absence of regulatory clarity is holding back several applications. “It is the regulation which is stopping,” he says, arguing that technology and innovation are not the biggest constraints.
Cross-border infrastructure compounds the problem. Participating countries would have to agree on how transactions are validated, who is accountable, when settlement is final and how disputes are handled across jurisdictions. A blockchain can hold a shared record of transactions. It cannot supply the legal framework that governs them.
What it will take
India’s digital rupee could eventually become part of a wider blockchain-enabled settlement ecosystem. But the RBI’s CBDC pilots and its exploration of cross-border use should not be mistaken for an operational alternative to existing international banking infrastructure.
The real test is whether institutions and sovereign governments can agree on common standards, ensure adequate liquidity and build the regulatory confidence that wider adoption needs.
For now, a failed UPI payment still takes days to come back. Whether blockchain shortens that wait, and whether the rupee one day travels more easily across borders, will depend less on the technology than on whether governments, banks and regulators can agree on the rules it runs on. The technology already offers a glimpse of what international settlement could look like. Whether the world’s financial system is ready to adopt it at scale remains unanswered.