UPI Transactions Worth 55% Of India’s GDP: Ashwini Vaishnaw At Google For India 2022

The transactions taking place on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) platform are worth 55% of India’s gross domestic product (GDP), Union Minister of Electronics and IT Ashwini Vaishnaw said.

“Transactions worth 55% of India’s GDP are happening on the UPI,” Vaishnaw said at the eighth edition of the Google For India event. 

So far in FY23, UPI transactions worth INR 86.93 Lakh Cr have been recorded by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). India’s real GDP at constant prices was pegged at around INR 147.4 Lakh Cr in FY22, according to the government’s statistics.

Therefore, UPI transactions between April and November 2022 are equal to about 59% of India’s GDP in FY22.

Incidentally, Google itself is one of the major players in the UPI space. According to November statistics, Google Pay is the second-largest UPI player in India, with 34.3% of all transactions going through the tech major’s flagship payments offering in India.

In a conversation with Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, who was also present at the event, Vaishnaw highlighted the importance of UPI and the indigenously-developed India Stack in general.

Giving details about India Stack and explaining the role of the private sector in exporting it to other economies, Vaishnaw said, “The interest of India Stack is there throughout the world. It’s a very unique way of developing technology and taking it to society.” 

The minister also pointed out the role of India Stack during the pandemic, and how the technology platform helped the country manage several waves and variants of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Over the last eight years, the vision of Digital India has taken us to a level where we have a successful, absolutely scalable India Stack. The India Stack helped us manage something as big as the pandemic. We were able to deliver 2.2 Bn vaccine doses; it was a massive work and it was only possible because of the India Stack,” said Vaishnaw.

The union minister, who also has the charge of railways and telecom, added that the role of the private sector in exporting India Stack and UPI abroad is critical.

“The government is providing the platform (India Stack) and on top of this platform, any entity can create its solutions. Our thought process is that we provide the platform and the private sector builds new solutions using that platform,” he said. 

Vaishnaw noted that India has already signed memoranda of understanding (MoUs) with around 30 countries for UPI payments. 

It must be noted that UPI is already live in several countries across Asia and the Middle East, while several European countries have also shown interest in the real-time digital payments platform.