UPI and Digital Payments in India
What UPI Is
The Unified Payments Interface lets anyone send money instantly from one bank account to another using a phone, with no card and no fees for most users.
UPI is a real-time payment system built by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and launched in April 2016.
How it feels
You scan a QR code or enter a UPI ID, confirm with a PIN and the money moves from your bank account to theirs in seconds.
Open system
Any UPI app can pay any other, whichever bank the people use. That interoperability is the key idea.
Scale
UPI now handles billions of transactions every month, more than any other real-time payment system in the world by volume.
A customer scans a printed QR code and pays a few rupees, and the vendor gets an instant alert.
It is a system that moves money between bank accounts.
- UPI launched in 2016.
- It moves money between bank accounts in seconds.
- Any app can pay any other.
- Volumes are among the world's highest.
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