Daijiworld Media Network – Mumbai
Mumbai, May 19: Unified Payments Interface (UPI) continued to dominate India’s digital payment ecosystem during the second half of 2025, accounting for 85.5 per cent of total payment transaction volume, according to the Reserve Bank of India’s latest Payment Systems Report.
However, in terms of transaction value, Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) remained the leading payment system with a 68.6 per cent share in total payments during the same period, reflecting its continued use for high-value transactions.
The RBI report highlighted that digital payments have witnessed rapid growth in recent years, with consumers increasingly shifting away from paper-based payment instruments such as cheques.
According to the report, the total number of payment transactions surged by 316 per cent, rising from 6,437 crore transactions in calendar year 2021 to 26,819 crore transactions in 2025.
During the same period, the total transaction value increased by 84 per cent from Rs 1,741 lakh crore to Rs 3,215 lakh crore.
The RBI noted that nearly all of this growth was driven by digital payment systems.
Digital payments accounted for around 98.9 per cent of total payment transactions by volume and 96.2 per cent by value in 2021. By 2025, these figures had increased further to 99.8 per cent by volume and 97.8 per cent by value.
The report stated that digital payments recorded a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 43.2 per cent in transaction volume and 17 per cent in transaction value during the period.
UPI emerged as the country’s most widely used fast payment system due to its ease of use, round-the-clock availability and efficiency.
UPI transaction volumes increased sharply from 3,873 crore transactions in 2021 to 22,828 crore transactions in 2025, while transaction value rose from Rs 72 lakh crore to Rs 300 lakh crore during the same period.
The report said UPI transactions registered a CAGR of 55.8 per cent in volume and 43 per cent in value over the four-year period.
At the same time, the average ticket size of UPI transactions declined from Rs 1,848 in 2021 to Rs 1,313 in 2025, indicating that the platform is increasingly being used for small-value daily payments.
The RBI report also noted rising usage of credit cards, debit cards, prepaid payment instrument (PPI) wallets and UPI QR codes, while the use of PPI cards, PoS terminals, bank-owned ATMs, cash recycling machines and micro ATMs witnessed a decline during the six-month period.