Asia-Pacific · GDP rank #5
India
IN · INR @ 0.0104/USD
The single most important instant-payments story in the world. UPI cleared 22.35 billion transactions and ₹29 lakh crore (~US$340bn) in April 2026 alone, a +25% YoY expansion. The policy architecture (UPI + RuPay + Aadhaar-eKYC + Account Aggregator + ONDC) is the de facto reference stack for emerging-market digital finance. India is one of five founding IPSs inside BIS Project Nexus.
Tab 03
Rails & infrastructure
The instant rail, the RTGS spine, the card switch, the direct-debit scheme, and the country's CBDC stance. Each rail is reported with operator, launch year, and 2024 flow so the relative scale across rails is readable at a glance.
CBDC status is deliberately granular: live, pilot, preparation, live stalled, and sceptical, no pilot are different things.
Retail pilot launched December 2022; ~5m retail wallet users by mid-2024. Wholesale e₹ live in G-sec market. RBI has deliberately avoided cannibalising UPI — e₹ retail uptake remains modest and is positioned as complementary to, not substitute for, deposit-based UPI.
Instant payments
Unified Payments Interface
The instant leg typically carries the vast majority of retail consumer flow in modern payment systems — and sits in direct tension with card networks and wallets for the same transactions.
- Operator
- National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI)
- Live since
- 2016-04-11
Transactions · 2024
txns/year · FY2025
Cleared value · 2024
INR/year · FY2025
Participating institutions
institutions · 2024
Alias registrations
VPAs · 2024
Rail features
- ▌24/7/365 push + pull payments with VPA addressing
- ▌Zero MDR on P2M below ₹2,000 for small merchants (policy mandate)
- ▌UPI AutoPay (recurring mandates) live since 2021
- ▌UPI Lite (offline small-value, on-device wallet) live 2022
- ▌Credit-on-UPI (pre-sanctioned credit lines) live September 2023
- ▌Cross-border UPI corridors with SG, AE, FR, BT, NP, LK, MU
RTGS
Real-time gross settlement
The RTGS spine clears high-value interbank flow — including the settlement of the instant-rail cycles and card-network net positions. Transaction count is modest; cleared value is enormous.
Transactions · 2024
txns/year · FY2025
Cleared value · 2024
INR/year · FY2025
Open banking
Regulatory and technical posture
- Regime
- Account Aggregator framework (RBI-supervised)
- Live Since
- 2021-09-02
Active AA consents
consents · Q4 2025
Monthly AA API calls
calls/month · Q4 2025
Full reference