India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) accounted for 85.5 percent of all payment transactions in the country by volume during the second half of calendar year 2025, according to the Reserve Bank of India’s Payments System Report for December 2025.
However, despite handling most transactions, UPI contributed only 9.5 percent of the total transaction value.
The report showed that the Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system handled just 0.1 percent of transaction volumes but accounted for 68.6 percent of the total transaction value.
This highlighted the difference between the two systems, with UPI mainly being used for everyday retail payments and RTGS being used for large-value transfers.
National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) held the second-largest share in both transaction volume and value. It accounted for 3.6 percent of total payment volumes and 14.9 percent of the total value.
India’s payment ecosystem witnessed strong growth between calendar years 2021 and 2025.
Total payment transaction volumes increased from 6,437 crore in 2021 to 26,819 crore in 2025, recording a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 42.9 percent.
During the same period, transaction value increased from Rs 1,741 lakh crore to Rs 3,215 lakh crore, growing at a CAGR of 16.6 percent.
Digital payments now account for 99.8 percent of all payment transactions by volume and 97.8 percent by value.
In 2021, the share of digital payments stood at 98.9 percent by volume and 96.2 percent by value.
Over the four-year period, digital payment volumes recorded a CAGR of 43.2 percent, while value grew at 17 percent annually.
UPI remained the biggest driver of this growth. UPI transaction volumes surged from 3,873 crore in 2021 to 22,828 crore in 2025, recording a CAGR of 55.8 percent.
In value terms, UPI transactions increased from Rs 72 lakh crore to Rs 300 lakh crore during the same period, growing at a CAGR of 43 percent.
UPI now accounts for nearly nine out of every ten digital payment transactions in India.
