80% of digital payments in India happen through UPI: RBI governor

80% of digital payments in India happen through UPI: RBI governor

Mumbai: The share of UPI in digital payments in India has reached close to 80 per cent in 2023, informed Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Shaktikanta Das on Monday, as he outlined the growth of payments ecosystem in the country.

Addressing the Digital Payments Awareness Week organised by Reserve Bank of India, the RBI governor said India has not only navigated through the fast-evolving technological innovations but also played a pivotal role, as a catalyst, in developing one of the most modern payment systems in the world.

"This has been made possible by nurturing diverse payment systems in the country, namely, the bill payments, merchant payments, vendor payments, transit payments, or recurring payments," Das said.

Retail digital payments in India have grown from 162 crore transactions in the financial year 2012-13 to over 14,726 crore transactions in 2023-24 (till February 2024) -- approximately a 90-fold increase over 12 years.

Today, India accounts for nearly 46 per cent of the world's digital transactions (as per 2022 data), the governor said.

"The extraordinary growth in digital payments is also evident in the Reserve Bank's Digital Payment Index, which has witnessed a four-fold rise in the last five years," he asserted.

"The flagship of our payment systems, the 'UPI',