Unified Payments Interface (UPI), the country’s most popular digital payment platform, closed the FY 26 processing transactions worth over Rs 308 lakh crore.
In March 2026, UPI transaction value approached the Rs 30 lakh crore milestone, or Rs 29.53 lakh crore for the month, amounting to an average of almost Rs 1 lakh crore daily, according to data available with the National Payments Corporation of India, which runs UPI.
The full-year daily average transaction value stood at Rs 84,500 crore.
The value of transactions grew by only 18.5 percent during the financial year, from Rs 260 lakh crore reported during FY 25. During the last financial year, UPI transaction value had recorded a 30 percent growth.
During March 2026, UPI recorded 22.6 billion transactions, a new record, and the full fiscal year transactions grew to 241.6 billion transactions, as reported by Moneycontrol last week.
UPI processed around 185 billion transactions in FY 25, with the growth rate slowing to 30 percent during the current financial year year compared to the 40 percent growth recorded during the preceding fiscal.
UPI’s transaction value growth has been declining as the platform gets adopted by people from the lower economic strata as well as by small merchants.
Volume growth driven by merchant payments
Merchant payments constituted around 62 percent of the overall UPI payments by transaction volume, but in value terms, person-to-person (p2p) payments are still more than twice as large as merchant payments.
For instance, 86 percent of the merchant payments were below Rs 500. Another 10 percent of merchant transactions were between Rs 500 and Rs 2,000.
In contrast, 44 percent of p2p transactions were above Rs 500. In fact, 22 percent of all p2p transactions were above Rs 2,000, making the overall value of UPI payments 2.7 times that of merchant payments.
This is largely owing to the large number of small merchants, roadside hawkers and other service providers started adopting UPI payments across the country, including in smaller towns and rural areas.