Unified Payments Interface (UPI) contribution to payments ecosystem volume grows to 83.4% in FY25

India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has further solidified its leading position in the payments landscape during FY25, with its share of transaction volume climbing to 83.4%, compared to 79.4% in FY24. As reported in the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) annual report for FY25, UPI facilitated 185.8 billion transactions, which represents an impressive increase of 41.7% from 131.1 billion transactions in the prior year. On the other hand, credit card transactions rose to 4.7 billion in FY25, up from 3.5 billion in FY24. Conversely, the number of debit card transactions fell dramatically by 29.5%, decreasing to 1.6 billion from 2.2 billion. Overall, the total payments in India, which include various payment systems, card payments, and prepaid payment instruments (PPIs), saw a growth of 34.8%, reaching 222.6 billion transactions in FY25, an increase from 165.1 billion in FY24. Digital transactions represented almost the entirety of non-cash retail payments at 99.9%, slightly up from 99.8% in FY24. Looking forward to FY26, the RBI intends to carry out a ‘Survey on Usage of Digital Payments’ to gain a better understanding of user transaction patterns and challenges. The regulator aims to promote innovation and the development of alternative payment methods, including the establishment of a Digital Payments Intelligence Platform (DPIP) to address digital payment fraud. This project is being developed in partnership with the Reserve Bank Innovation Hub (RBIH), which is collaborating on a prototype with multiple banks. The RBI is also focused on improving cross-border payment beneficiary processing and may implement regulatory measures after consulting with stakeholders. In FY25, the RBI granted authorization to 26 online Payment Aggregators, five cross-border Payment Aggregators, 11 non-bank PPI issuers, and one Trade Receivables and Discounting System (TReDS) platform, while conducting on-site inspections of 84 payment system operators.