Indian Economy News

UPI Recognized as World’s Largest Real-Time Payment System by IMF

The latest global reports indicate that India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is the world's most sophisticated and widely used real-time payment system. UPI is evaluated by the International Monetary Fund (June 25, 2025) as being the largest retail fast-payment service by transaction volume; also, according to ACI Worldwide's 2024 article titled "The Prime Time for Real-Time Payments," UPI has nearly half of the world's estimated market share (49 percent) in real-time payment transactions. According to research conducted comparing UPI with the other countries in terms of the quantity of transactions during June 2025, India leads substantially with 129.3 billion transactions, which is far greater than those of Brazil (37.4 billion), Thailand (20.4 billion), China (17.2 billion), and South Korea (9.1 billion) combined. These data demonstrate that India's comparative leadership results from an advanced, robust digital public infrastructure; a continuously supportive regulatory environment; and a system designed with interoperability as a core tenet.
The Government of India, Bank of India, and the National Payments Corporation of India have initiated targeted efforts to expand access for small merchants in neglected areas. These efforts have included many incentive programs that support low-value BHIM-UPI transactions, as well as the Payments Infrastructure Development Fund (PIDF), which provides financial support to banks and fintech organisations for the deployment of digital payment infrastructure in tier-3 to tier-6 areas. There are approximately 5.45 crore digital contact points in use through the PIDF as of October 31, 2025, significantly improving last-mile accessibility. An estimated 56.86 crore QR codes have been distributed to 6.5 crore merchants, encouraging broader acceptance of digital payments. Additionally, the widespread adoption of RuPay and UPI has accelerated digital payments across public service delivery, transportation systems, and e-commerce, establishing India as a global leader in real-time payments technology.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.