Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi ended the second and final of his state visit to Israel on February 26, 2026, according to a report by All India Radio.

During his visit a delegation of Israeli officials was in New Delhi negotiating a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in parallel with their Indian counterparts headed by India’s Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal.

The round of FTA negotiations were positive but didn’t conclude with the agreement as was widely expected, and instead a second round of negotiations has been scheduled for May 2026. It is unclear what issues or obstructions remain in concluding the agreement, or if the issues are regulatory or legislative that need to be resolved first before any preferential trade access to either side can be granted by the other.

According to the official website of the Indian prime minister, Modi delivered a joint statement to the press alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, continuing his comments on terrorism being unacceptable in any form, expressions and manifestations including cross border terrorism which was unequivocally supported by the Israeli side.

The summit’s official outcomes have been listed as 16 agreements across domains such as emerging technologies, cyber, agriculture, water management, health, entrepreneurship, mobility, defence and security. One of these agreements is an MoU between India’s NPCI International (NIPL) and Israel’s MASAV on implementation of India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) digital payments system in Israel.

Modi made a reference to being informed that the agreement will now lead the way in enabling UPI to be functional in Israel. The goal behind the agreement is to enable seamless remittances between Israeli and Indian nationals, companies and entities via an instant and well regulated digital mechanism.

UPI is a fully sovereign technology as part of India’s digital public infrastructure and doesn’t rely on any third party services like SWIFT. While SWIFT is the ubiquitous standard for cross border digital payments, the exclusion of Russian financial institutions from it after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine has established a precedent.

States with a high sense of sovereign fiscal patterns in international trade seek to develop or adopt alternatives which can’t be cut off depending on the political and alignment calculations of third parties at any time.

While defence agreements were also expected as the two countries have a burgeoning security relationship and shared cross border threats, nothing substantive on the procurement of new platforms or systems was announced during or in conjunction to the visit.