July 14, 2025
UPI has surpassed Visa, which processes 639 million daily transactions across over 200 countries
This milestone comes just nine years after UPI’s launch, underscoring its rapid scale and adoption
According to the IMF, India now leads the world in fast retail payments, driven largely by UPI
UPI’s success has come despite its presence in only seven countries, highlighting its global potential
Unified Payments Interface (UPI), India’s homegrown digital payments platform, has officially outpaced global giant Visa to become the world’s largest real-time payments system. With over 650.26 million daily transactions, UPI has taken a commanding lead in the global digital payments landscape.
Amitabh Kant, former CEO of NITI Aayog and India’s ex-G20 Sherpa, celebrated the development on social media, calling it a significant milestone for India’s digital infrastructure. He noted that achieving this scale in just nine years reflects the platform’s unprecedented growth. He also described UPI as a transformative achievement under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, one that has significantly improved everyday life for millions of Indians.
Despite Visa’s presence in over 200 countries, UPI, currently active in only seven, has emerged as a formidable global player in digital payments. The IMF, in a recent Fintech Note titled Growing Retail Digital Payments: The Value of Interoperability, highlighted India’s leadership in the domain of fast retail payments. The report attributed this position largely to the rapid and widespread adoption of UPI since its 2016 launch.
Developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), UPI is an instant inter-bank payment system built for mobile platforms. It now processes more than 18 billion transactions every month and dominates the electronic retail payments space in India. The IMF also observed that traditional instruments like debit and credit cards are seeing a relative decline as UPI continues to scale.
Source: Times of India