Many countries have reaped the benefits of financial inclusion, efficiency and scale from building DPIs in the field of digital payments. India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and the Brazilian PIX system are among the commonly cited examples. A large part of the success of such systems can be attributed to the design principle of pursuing interoperability among market players through the use of standardized protocols and common infrastructure. This makes for an interesting point of intersection between the rise of DPIs and their competition policy implications. The United Nation's interim report on digital public infrastructure (DPI) also recognizes the importance of fair market competition as one of the foundational principles for safe and inclusive DPI.

An exploration of the competition effects of DPI would include both the pro-competitive gains from interoperability and innovation and possible threats to competition. For instance, certain DPIs models could give rise to issues of market concentration, infrastructural lock-in, gatekeeping by DPI operators and the use of regulatory coercion to shape market outcomes. Many of these concerns are reminiscent of the challenges posed by the big tech industry, prompting the exploration of whether DPI giants could end up emerging as the new 'alt big tech'?