THE DECADE THAT CHANGED HOW INDIA PAYS

A study across two Indian states offers a view of how Indians are experiencing UPI

- Nikita Kwatra, Khushi Baldota & Anushri Pundit

UPI's greatest unrealized potential lies not just in bringing the next 250 million users into the system, but in deepening what participation enables.

Few economies have seen everyday payment habits change as quickly as India has. In less than 10 years, the smallest transactions have shifted from cash to an instant digital rail used hundreds of millions of times a day. The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) today supports an estimated 491 million users and processed around 185 billion payments in the financial year ended 2025—more than 500 million transactions every day. By November 2025, that daily volume had climbed to nearly 700 million.

What stands out is not just the scale but the composition of this activity. Much of UPI's growth has come from the low-value, high-frequency payments that once moved almost entirely in cash including daily household purchases, neighbourhood services, small retail transactions and person-to-person transfers. No earlier retail payment system in India operated at this breadth of use. To put that in perspective: India's Immediate Payment Service (IMPS), a core instant interbank rail that also underpins UPI, handles roughly 3% of UPI's daily volume; Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS), designed for large-value transfers between banks and businesses, processes in a full day what UPI clears within minutes; and for every credit card transaction in the country, there are nearly 40 UPI payments.

Each system serves a different purpose, but the comparison underscores how dramatically the centre of gravity in India’s payment landscape has shifted.

This pattern demonstrates that UPI's rise is not merely a technological upgrade; it reflects a deeper behavioural shift in how routine payment activity is conducted across the country.