“Japan and India are trying to promote digital cooperation. We are now seriously thinking about joining the Indian UPI payment system,” Japan’s minister for digital affairs Kono Taro told Wion news on Thursday.

Taro had earlier spoken to LiveMint in March where he suggested that Japan would be sending a team to India to properly analyse the UPI system. If Japan were to adopt the digital payments platform, discussions would be held on the potential linking of the two countries’ systems. The Japanese minister also touched upon bilateral cooperation with respect to telecommunication systems security.

While speaking to Wion, Taro lauded the convenience of the UPI system as it can be utilised for transferring money across countries once it is incorporated by Singapore, Thailand or the UAE that have also expressed interest in adopting it as a standard. “So it could be another standard of tele-payment cross border tele-payment system,” he added.

In reference to India’s digital identity program, expected to form the foundation for interoperability, he said that the East Asian country was looking at options to mutually recognise the same.

Following the G7 Digital Ministers Meeting held last week, in which India’s telecom and IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw was also a participant, the group decided to bring in a new international framework which is a permanent secretariat on cross-border data flow.

Responding to Taro’s statements, Vaishnaw thanked the Japanese digital minister for ‘accepting PM Modi’s deep and extensive vision for Digital India’.