New Delhi (09.12.2025): The International Monetary Fund (IMF) report on ‘Growing Retail Digital Payments (The Value of Interoperability)’ dated June 2025 had recognized Unified Payments Interface (UPI) as the world’s largest retail fast-payment system (FPS) by transaction volume. Further, as per ACI Worldwide report on ‘Prime Time for Real-Time’ 2024, UPI has around 49 per cent share in the global real-time payment system transaction volume.

The detailed comparison illustrating UPI's current status and market share against other leading international real-time payment platforms is given in the table below.

In order to support small scale merchants in adopting digital payment systems including UPI, various initiatives have been taken up by the Government, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) from time to time. These inter alia, include incentive scheme for promotion of low value BHIM-UPI transactions, and the Payments Infrastructure Development Fund (PIDF) which provides grant support to the banks and fintechs for deployment of digital payment infrastructure (such as POS Terminals and QR codes) in tier-3 to 6 centers. As of October 31, 2025, approximately 5.45 crore digital touch points have been deployed through PIDF in tier-3 to 6 centers. Further, as of FY 2024-25, a total of 56.86 crore QR were deployed to approximately 6.5 crore merchants.