UPI handles 80 cr transactions daily: Sitharaman
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman declared UPI to be the world's largest real-time payment system, processing approximately 80 crore transactions daily. She stressed the rapid expansion of digital payments in India, noting that UPI transactions have surged by nearly 13,000 times since 2016-17. The platform now handles over 2,400 crore transactions monthly, underscoring the pervasiveness of digital payments in daily life.
Sitharaman highlighted how the fintech ecosystem surrounding UPI and other digital initiatives is facilitating financial services, such as credit, insurance, and investment products, to a broader population for the first time. In discussing infrastructure for India's digital economy, she likened data centers to the "vault of the digital age."
The government granted infrastructure status to data centers in 2022, and the 2026-27 Union Budget announced a tax holiday for foreign companies offering global cloud services through Indian data centers. The Reserve Bank's new campus will bolster India's ability to manage critical financial systems within the country, housing RTGS and NEFT systems, a training institute, and a research wing focused on cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and data centers.
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