UPI: the origins, the rise and the influence it has on payments

Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is India’s most popular payment method; but how did it become a payment goliath to the envy of the rest of the world? India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is one of payments’ biggest success stories of the last decade. It has become not just India’s largest payment processor, but one of the world’s leading means of payment, reaching its peak in 2025 when, for the first time, it processed more daily transactions in June 2025 than Visa .