India makes 85% of digital payments through UPI: RBI Governor

In a strong testament to India’s digital transformation, nearly 85% of the country’s digital payment transactions are conducted through the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), Reserve Bank Governor of India (RBI) Sanjay Malhotra said. Highlighting India’s success in building inclusive and scalable digital infrastructure, Malhotra noted that the country stands as a global case study in Digital Public Platforms (DPPs).Speaking at a high-level dialogue on forging economic resilience through Digital Public Platforms organised by the Reserve Bank of India on the sidelines of the Annual Meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC, the Governor said DPPs have emerged as a “powerful catalyst for inclusive growth and innovation.”
Malhotra emphasised that foundational platforms such as Aadhaar for digital identity and UPI for real-time payments have successfully demonstrated how to build resilient and cost-efficient public service delivery systems at scale. “Our guiding principle has been to build such platforms in the public sector as a public good with suitable guardrails, and without a profit motive,” he said.He added that both public and private sector entities are leveraging these platforms to develop applications across diverse domains such as credit, health, social protection, and agriculture.
On the payments front, Malhotra said UPI has transformed India’s financial ecosystem by enabling instant, efficient, and secure money transfers between bank accounts. “Around 85 per cent of digital payment transactions in India today are carried out through UPI. About 20 billion transactions are made every month using UPI, representing a value equivalent to over $280 billion,” he said.The Governor described UPI as a “powerful catalyst” for financial inclusion, enabling small vendors and micro enterprises to accept payments digitally and build credit histories that provide access to formal financing at lower costs.Reaffirming India’s commitment to global digital cooperation, Malhotra said, “We believe that the benefits of Digital Public Platforms should be available to the whole world, in the spirit of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam—‘the world is one family’—which was also the theme of India’s G20 presidency.”He also highlighted India’s development of the Modular Open-Source Identity Platform (MOSIP) for digital identity, a free, secure, and scalable system that allows countries to build their own national digital ID systems. So far, 27 countries are either adopting or considering MOSIP-based systems to deliver essential services quickly and directly to citizens, he added.

(Business Correspondent)