



Groceries to gold: How UPI's micro-payments reshaped India's spending habits
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. It’s been nearly 10 years since the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) arrived in the Indian market and revolutionized how Indians make everyday payments. More than 636 million UPI payments worth nearly ₹82,000 crore were made on an average day in November.
The number of transactions has been rising every month. The past five years have seen average daily transactions grow six times in value and eight times in volume. This makes UPI the most widely used payment channel, clocking 20 billion transactions in a month, nearly double this year.
No other major payment method comes even halfway. In terms of value, it’s second only to the National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT). However, while NEFT payments have doubled since the start of the pandemic, UPI has soared 12 times, marking the biggest jump among major categories, outpacing credit and debit cards as well.
This comes on the back of UPI’s ever-rising popularity for small-value payments, which is why it lags NEFT on total payment value. An average UPI payment is now worth just around ₹1,300, down by more than half since UPI’s initial years, and it is in a continuous decline. If we look at India's average monthly spends using UPI, the figure is rising: the amount comes to around ₹17,400 (November 2025), or ₹580 per day, up by 14% year-on-year.
These are findings of a Mint analysis of data from the National Payments Corp. of India. The data lists monthly UPI payments made to various kinds of businesses, and in all Indian states.
Read on livemint.com