Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday hailed the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) as a major milestone in India's digital payments journey, as the platform completed a decade of operations.
Marking 10 years since its launch, Modi said the scale and reach achieved by UPI was a matter of pride for every Indian and invited people to share their experiences of how the digital payments platform had impacted their lives.
"A decade ago, UPI was rolled out, marking a major turning point in India's digital payments journey. The sheer scale and reach of UPI are something every Indian must be proud of," Modi said in a post on X.
The UPI was launched on August 25, 2016, by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) under the regulatory oversight of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Since then, it has become a key pillar of India's digital payments ecosystem and a major driver of financial inclusion.
UPI has witnessed a dramatic expansion in both transaction volume and value. Annual transactions rose from 1.78 crore in 2016-17 to more than 24,162 crore in 2025-26, an almost 13,000-fold increase.
During the same period, the value of transactions surged from Rs 0.07 lakh crore to around Rs 314 lakh crore, marking an increase of more than 4,000 times.
The platform has also emerged as one of the most prominent components of India's Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), offering an interoperable, real-time payment system that facilitates seamless peer-to-peer and peer-to-merchant transactions through a single application, according to an official release.
With its decade-long growth, UPI has evolved from a digital payment initiative into a central component of India's financial and digital infrastructure.
(With inputs from PTI)
