From UPI to tokenised assets: Is India building the next generation of financial infrastructure?

India is evolving its financial infrastructure by transitioning from the high-volume UPI payment system to a programmable, tokenized asset framework. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is actively developing a Unified Markets Interface to facilitate tokenized settlements using wholesale central bank digital currency. Simultaneously, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) launched a 'Demat 2.0' pilot on September 10, 2026, to test tokenized corporate bonds within a regulated environment. This shift aims to enhance market efficiency by automating lifecycle events and enabling fractional ownership for assets like real estate and infrastructure. Success hinges on establishing robust legal frameworks, ensuring global interoperability, and maintaining the security standards of traditional regulated markets. By leveraging existing digital public infrastructure, India seeks to create a scalable ecosystem where financial assets and their underlying rights become digitally native. This transition represents a fundamental move from merely digitizing transactions to digitizing the core processes of asset issuance, ownership, and settlement.