PM Modi hails the role of UPI in enabling the vision of Digital India

PM Narendra Modi with NPCI CEO Dilip Asbe, Courtesy: PM Modi's Linkedin post

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has hailed the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) for processing half of all real-time digital transactions in the world.

He attributed the success of India’s popular real-time payments system to the government’s Digital India initiative, which completed 10 years on July 1, and is the backbone of several government programmes.

“India Stack, which is our digital backbone, has enabled platforms like UPI, which now handles 100+ billion transactions a year. Around half of all real-time digital transactions happen in India,” Modi said in a post on social media platform LinkedIn, marking 10 years of his government’s initiative.

A flagship programme of the government, Digital India was launched on July 1, 2015 to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy.

UPI, the world’s largest retail real-time payments system, records around 630 million transactions a day and over 18 billion in a month.

The transactions for FY25, however, fell short of the government's 200-billion target, recording 185 billion transactions.

Around 85 percent of all digital transactions in India happen through UPI after with a wide adoption by consumers and merchants. Growing internet penetration in the country has also given a boost to UPI.

“In 2014, India had around 25 crore internet connections. Today, that number has grown to over 97 crore,” Modi said in the post.

As reported by Moneycontrol, UPI is on the cusp of surpassing global payments giant Visa’s daily transaction volume, which will make it the largest retail interbank payment settlement platform in the world.

Also read: PM Modi on 10 years of Digital India: ‘When the intent is right, innovation empowers…’

Bridging the gap between haves and have-nots

“While decades were spent thinking that the use of technology would deepen the gap between the haves and the have-nots, we changed this mindset and used technology to eliminate the gap between the haves and the have-nots,” Modi said.

The Prime Minister also said the success of initiatives such as Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) from Aadhaar, GeM (Government E-Marketplace), ONDC, DBT, CoWIN, DigiLocker, and FASTag to PM-WANI and One Nation One Subscription had led to these programmed being studied and adopted globally.

“When the approach is inclusive, technology brings change in the lives of those on the margins. From how we govern, to how we learn, transact, and build, Digital India is everywhere,” Modi added.

The next decade would be even more transformative, with the country moving from digital governance to global digital leadership, from “India-first to India-for-the-world”, the Prime Minister said.

“Digital India has not remained a mere government programme, it has become a people’s movement. It is central to building an Aatmanirbhar Bharat, and to making India a trusted innovation partner to the world.”