India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has been acknowledged as the world’s largest retail fast-payment system (FPS) by transaction volume, according to the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) June 2025 report titled “Growing Retail Digital Payments (The Value of Interoperability)”. The achievement further aligns with ACI Worldwide’s “Prime Time for Real-Time 2024” report, which states that UPI accounts for an impressive 49% of global real-time payment transactions.
The comparative global data highlights India’s dominance, with UPI recording 129.3 billion transactions, well ahead of Brazil (37.4 billion), Thailand (20.4 billion), China (17.2 billion), and South Korea (9.1 billion).
To boost digital payments adoption- especially among small-scale merchants- the Government of India, Reserve Bank of India (RBI), and National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) have implemented several targeted initiatives. These include:
- Incentive schemes to encourage low-value BHIM-UPI transactions
- Payments Infrastructure Development Fund (PIDF) for expanding POS terminals and QR deployment
- Expansion of BHIM-UPI and RuPay acceptance across public services, transport, and e-commerce platforms
As of October 31, 2025, 5.45 crore digital touchpoints have been installed under PIDF across tier-3 to tier-6 regions. In FY 2024–25, 56.86 crore QR codes were deployed to 6.5 crore merchants, significantly broadening India’s digital payments ecosystem.
The information was shared by the Minister of State for Finance, Shri Pankaj Chaudhary, in a written reply in the Lok Sabha.
