UK-India Payments: Market Entry in the CETA ERA

India is the world's largest real-time digital payments market, and its regulatory architecture for payments, cross-border flows and India is the world's largest real-time digital payments market, and its regulatory architecture for payments, cross-border flows, and data is being rewritten at pace. At the same time, the UK–India Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) entered into force on 15 July 2026, with a dedicated financial services chapter that opens new market access commitments for UK payments and fintech companies.

This report argues that while CETA opens the door, India’s payments-specific regulatory regime run by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) remains the real gatekeeper for market entry. UK firms that treat CETA as a green light without mapping RBI's parallel rulebook (payment aggregator licensing, cross-border escrow requirements, and payment-data localisation) risk a costly and tumultuous start.

This report is structured to delve on three things:

▸ A clear map of the regulatory perimeter: what licences, capital, and data requirements apply to which category of payments business.

▸ An empirical assessment of what CETA changes, and what it explicitly does not, in this sector.

▸ A set of practical entry points for UK firms, and policy asks UKIBC can carry into government engagement on members