International Monetary Fund (IMF) recognises Unified Payments Interface (UPI) as world’s largest retail fast-payment system.

Key facts

• IMF June 2025 study Growing Retail Digital Payments (The Value of Interoperability) placed UPI ahead of other global real-time payment platforms.
• ACI Worldwide Prime Time for Real-Time 2024 report estimated UPI accounted for about 49% of global real-time payment transactions.
• India recorded 129.3 billion UPI transactions, followed by Brazil, Thailand, China and South Korea at significantly lower volumes.
• Payments Infrastructure Development Fund (PIDF) subsidises deployment of point-of-sale devices and QR codes, creating around 5.45 crore digital touchpoints as of October 31, 2025.
• In FY 2024–25 approximately 56.86 crore QR codes were deployed to roughly 6.5 crore merchants.