Just nine years into its existence, India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has surpassed Visa as the world’s largest real-time payment system in both the number of transactions and total transaction volume.
On June 1, UPI processed 644 million transactions. In comparison, Visa’s average daily transaction volume in 2024 was 639 million.
UPI has also far outpaced its rivals in the total value of those transactions. In May 2025, UPI transaction value was 12 times greater than the combined total of all card transactions. Overall, India now accounts for nearly half of all global digital payments, per News18.
This trend isn’t likely to reverse anytime soon. UPI continues to grow at an annual rate of roughly 40%, while Visa reports just 10% annual growth in transactions. The Indian government has set a target to increase UPI’s daily transaction volume to one billion.
Aggressive Growth
How did UPI get here in less than a decade? Most of the answer lies in the aggressive decisions made by the Royal Bank of India, the country’s central bank. In 2011, RBI found that in India, individuals conducted only six non-cash transactions per year on average. As a result, the National Payment Corporation of India was tasked with simplifying digital transactions and creating a unified interface that could be used across all payment systems.
Its solution was UPI, launched in April 2016. By 2018, Visa and Mastercard were already responding to the rapid growth of the new system. Today, 83% of all digital transactions in India take place via UPI, up from just 34% in 2019.
UPI has benefited from developing within a relatively mature technological landscape. In addition to integration with India’s major banks, UPI is also embedded in third-party applications such as Google Pay. The service has easily adapted to modern features like recurring payments and QR code-based transactions.
Still Innovating
All along, the government has kept UPI transactions largely free or subject to minimal charges, in contrast to the fees typically associated with traditional credit and debit card payments. In May, the Indian government said it was considering offering direct discounts to consumers who use UPI. Under the proposed plan, UPI users would automatically receive a 2% discount compared to the credit card price.
RBI has also announced plans to lift the transaction limits on UPI, which would open up the system to more business-to-business payments. Previously, UPI transactions were capped at approximately $1,162 for merchant transactions, forcing many users to either split larger purchases into multiple transactions or opt for alternative payment methods.
