Unified Payments Interface

Unified Payments Interface, commonly known as UPI is an Indian instant payment system as well as protocol developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) in 2016. The interface facilitates inter-bank peer-to-peer (P2P) and person-to-merchant (P2M) transactions. It is used on mobile devices to instantly transfer funds between two bank accounts using only a unique UPI ID. It runs as an open source application programming interface (API) on top of the Immediate Payment Service (IMPS), and is regulated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Major Indian banks started making their UPI-enabled apps available to customers in August 2016 and the system is today supported by almost all Indian banks.

As of 2025, the platform had over 500 million active users in India. In May 2025, 18.67 billion UPI transactions worth ₹ 25.14 trillion (approx. 293 billion USD) were processed by the UPI system, equivalent to almost 7,000 transactions on average every second. The widespread adoption and usage of UPI has positioned India as the global leader in instant payments, accounting for 46% of all global instant payment transactions in 2022.The successful execution of an instant payment system at such an enormous scale has made it a soft power tool for India and is often cited as one of the most transformative and successful financial technology innovations India has developed.