Time Series of India — India's public data, charted and explained

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Economy · Beats<br>Six things India’s payment data knows<br>A swipe through what the numbers reveal about how the country moves money. One chart, one idea at a time.<br>Scroll to begin ↓

The rail<br>UPI went six-fold in four years<br>In 2021 Indians made 3,789 crore UPI payments; by 2025, more than six times as many. It’s now the world’s largest real-time payment system.

Reliability<br>UPI got more reliable as it got bigger<br>Six times the volume, and UPI’s technical-failure rate still fell the whole way, from about 1.5% of payments to 0.4%. Systems usually strain under that kind of load. This one hardened.

Who owns the rail<br>Two apps run 83% of UPI<br>PhonePe and Google Pay have split four-fifths of UPI volume between them for four straight years, even as the regulator’s 30% market-share cap keeps getting deferred.

One constant<br>Groceries stayed #1 while everything below it reshuffled<br>Rank India’s UPI categories by number of payments and only groceries never moves, #1 every year. Beneath it the order churns: fast food climbs from last to second, loans and stocks sink to the bottom.

Cards<br>UPI killed the debit card, not the credit card<br>Debit-card payments have collapsed since 2021 as people scan a QR code instead. Credit kept climbing and overtook debit in 2023, because a credit card isn’t really a payment tool: it’s a loan.

What each rail is for<br>One RTGS transfer is worth 5,000 UPI payments<br>The average RTGS transfer moves about ₹66 lakh; an average UPI payment, ₹1,313; a FASTag toll, ₹181. “Payments” is really many systems: one for corporate fortunes, one for chai.

The end<br>Time Series of India<br>India’s public data, charted and explained. That’s the deck — keep going: the reads add the context, the dashboards let you dig in yourself.<br>Explore the Reads → Open the dashboards →