NEW YORK, January 3, 2026, 06:54 ET
India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI), a real-time system that lets users move money between bank accounts via mobile apps, logged 21.63 billion transactions in December, up 29% from a year earlier, with value up 20% to about 28 lakh crore rupees (about 28 trillion rupees), data from payments operator NPCI showed. Average daily value rose to 90,217 crore rupees from 87,721 crore in November, while daily volumes climbed to 698 million. Immediate Payment Service (IMPS), an instant bank transfer system, recorded 6.62 lakh crore rupees in value and 380 million transactions in December, the data showed. 1
The record finish matters because UPI has become the backbone of day-to-day retail payments in India, and shifts in its volumes can quickly ripple through banks, payment apps and merchants.
The latest jump also keeps attention on what comes next for India’s payments rails, as the ecosystem looks for new users and new use cases after years of rapid adoption.
On a month-on-month basis, UPI transactions rose about 5.7% in December, while transaction value climbed about 6.3% to nearly 28 lakh crore rupees, The Times of India reported, citing NPCI data. The previous high was in October at 2,070 crore transactions worth 27.3 lakh crore rupees, the paper said. It also reported that Fastag electronic toll payments rose 4.1% month on month to 38.4 crore transactions, but were flat from a year earlier. 2
For the full year, UPI recorded more than 228 billion transactions worth nearly 300 lakh crore rupees, up 32.5% in volume and 21% in value versus 2024, Business Today reported. It said NPCI is pushing new features such as UPI Circle, which enables delegated payments, and UPI Lite, designed for low-value, PIN-less transactions, while also working on bringing credit cards and bank credit lines onto UPI. NPCI and the Reserve Bank of India are also exploring cross-border QR-based payments and adoption of UPI and RuPay, India’s domestic card network, in other countries, it said. 3
“UPI has reaffirmed its role as the backbone of everyday commerce,” said Anand Kumar Bajaj, founder and managing director of payments platform PayNearby, according to Mint. 4
Bringing credit products into UPI would push the system deeper into consumer lending, an area still dominated by card and bank credit rails. It could also change how payment firms and banks pitch UPI to merchants, moving beyond pure convenience to spending power.
Delegated payments and low-value, PIN-less modes target a different problem: how to onboard the next wave of users without adding friction at the checkout. Those features also give families and small businesses more ways to manage day-to-day spending on a shared account.
Cross-border QR payments would extend UPI’s scan-and-pay model beyond India’s borders, potentially giving travellers and overseas merchants a familiar way to settle small purchases. The pace will depend on how quickly partners and regulators align on standards, settlement and consumer protections.
The scale of December’s volumes underscores why UPI performance is watched closely inside the industry. When the system works, it handles hundreds of millions of payments a day; when it slows, the impact is immediate.
IMPS numbers also rose at year-end, suggesting demand remains strong for instant bank transfers outside the UPI app layer. That gives policymakers another gauge of how digital payments are spreading across use cases.
With 2025 ending at a record level, the next few monthly data releases will show whether UPI can sustain growth from a higher base, or whether usage normalises after the year-end spike.
