Indian man tries UPI at Singapore airport, gets reality check after Google Pay fails

An Indian man travelling through Singapore found out that using UPI abroad can still come with a few surprises after his Google Pay payment failed at Changi Airport.

Nikhil George, an X user, shared a screen recording of his attempted payment, showing what happened when he tried to scan a QR code at The Cocoa Trees in Changi Airport.

In the video, George scanned the QR code using Google Pay and was taken to the payment screen. However, instead of completing the transaction, the app displayed an error message that read, “Could not get conversion rate. Try scanning again.”

George said the cashier had warned him beforehand that UPI payments “almost never works” there, but he decided to give it a shot anyway. The payment ultimately failed, leaving him to point out that while UPI has expanded to several international markets, using it overseas may not always be as seamless as it is in India.

“Despite all the headlines about UPI going global, ground-level reliability abroad still has a long way to go. Keep your cards handy,” he wrote.

Take a look at his post here: Tried paying with UPI at The Cocoa Trees in Changi Airport today.The cashier warned me upfront that it almost never works, but I insisted on trying.Scanned the QR using GPay and it just stalled and threw: "Could not get conversion rate. Try scanning again."Despite all the pic.twitter.com/T3KPWsa60b— nikhil george (@nikhilgeorge) September 27, 2026The post sparked discussion among users, with several people sharing their own experiences of trying to make digital payments outside India.

One user said they had faced difficulties using Indian cards abroad, while another claimed their UPI payments had failed at multiple locations in Sri Lanka.

Others, however, said UPI can work smoothly at certain overseas merchants. One user mentioned regularly using UPI at Mustafa in Singapore, saying a 10 per cent discount on UPI payments made it worthwhile compared with the foreign-exchange markup on card payments.- Ends