Make UPI robust to prevent disruptions, FM Sitharaman tells NPCI

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has underscored the need to achieve the target of one billion UPI transactions per day within the next two to three years. She has stressed the importance of accelerating the internationalisation of UPI with the development of interoperable frameworks. The Finance Minister on Monday chaired a meeting in New Delhi to review various aspects and the way ahead for the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) ecosystem. The meeting was attended by senior officials from the Finance Ministry, Reserve Bank of India, and National Payments Corporation of India.
The Finance Minister encouraged officials to intensify efforts to onboard more users and merchants onto the UPI platform to broaden its reach and impact. She also asked all stakeholders to work collaboratively to address infrastructure gaps, enhance the end-user experience, and improve cybersecurity architecture. The Union Finance Minister directed the National Payments Corporation of India to reinforce UPI’s robustness and prevent future disruptions.
According to the Finance Ministry, UPI is witnessing significant growth. From the financial year 2019-20 to 2024-25, UPI transactions registered a compound annual growth rate of 72 percent. Around 26 crore new users and 5.5 crore new merchants have been successfully onboarded onto the UPI platform between the financial years 2021-22 and 2024-25. UPI now has approximately 45 crore active users. In the last financial year, UPI transactions amounted to 261 lakh crore rupees, registering a 30 percent year-on-year growth.The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has directed members of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) network to adhere to a set of guidelines on API calls, the overuse of which resulted in an outage of the real-time payments system earlier this month.

(Business Correspondent)