UPI Is World’s Largest Real Time Payment System

It was on August 25, 2016, that the UPI was launched officially by the National Payments Corporation of India. By the next year, transactions had touched 1 million per month. Demonetisation, which happened in 2017, added a big fillip to it. Its acceptance has since grown at blistering pace and on July 13 it became the biggest real time payment system in the world with more than 650 million daily transactions, beating Visa which made 639 million transactions.

UPI, born out of a need to make digital payments convenient and accessible, to the vast majority of Indians, managed to achieve this through using the mobile phone as its medium. The technology was reliable and safe. It also came tied to the financial inclusivity that was happening as more Indians started to own bank accounts than ever before through focused government policies. The latest milestone correlates with India’s own economic growth.

Online, people lauded the achievement. Amitabh Kant, former Niti Aayog, chef executive officer, posted on X, ‘Achieving this in just 9 years highlights its unmatched scale and momentum. From India to the world, UPI is leading the digital payment revolution!’ He was also referring to another major success of UPI, other countries adopting the system.  Since Bhutan first started accepting UPI, many others have followed suit. The NPCI plans to expand the list to 20 countries by 2029.

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