UPI Achieves New Milestone: 20 Billion Transactions in August, Value Nears Rs 25 Lakh Crore

The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has exceeded the 20 million monthly transaction volume milestone in August, according to National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which is responsible for running UPI.

UPI Transactions Rise

The platform recorded 20.01 billion transactions in August 2025 as compared to 19.47 billion transactions in July.

The total transaction volume for August stood at Rs 24.85 lakh crore, marginally lower than the Rs 25.08 lakh crore recorded in July 2025.

Nearly 15 billion transactions were processed by UPI in August 2024, with the platforms recording a 33% year-on-year (YoY) growth.

Daily UPI transactions had previously crossed the 700 million mark for the first time on August 2, 2025 and a few days later the platform also processed 721 million transactions.

UPI Targeting A Higher Number

The government has also set a higher target of one billion (100 crore) transactions a day for UPI, which seems closer, with the platforms set to achieve it sometime next year, at the current rate of growth.

Even though the growth has slowed down as compared to recent years, the number of daily transactions has doubled over the last two years. In August 2023, UPI was registering approximately 350 million transactions a day, and during August last year, UPI saw nearly 500 million daily transactions.

More Support For Merchant Discount Rate

New UPI records data comes amidst rising calls for a merchant discount rate (MDR) on merchant payments, which is the payment commission merchants need to pay to payment entities, including banks.

Additionally, in the span of the last year, fintech as well as payment companies' associations have been requesting Centre to impose a marginal MDR for large merchants and high-value merchant transactions.

While the government has reduced subsidies for UPI from around Rs 4,500 crore in FY24 to Rs 1,500 crore in FY25, it has not yet accepted the MDR demand from the ecosystem.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) recently has voiced its support for the demand of MDR on payment companies.

Factors such as the lack of monetisation and lower subsidies has likely forced ICICI Bank to charge payment aggregators for facilitating UPI payments. Few other banks have also been charging payment companies various fees.

Steady Organic Growth

In July, UPI recorded nearly 19.5 billion transactions worth over Rs 25 lakh crore. In August, the platform saw around 645 million transactions in a day on average, worth around Rs 80,000 crore daily.

Other than one day, UPI had managed to cross 600 million daily transactions all throughout August.  The platform usually processes more transactions during the first few days of the month, which begin to reduce by the middle of the month.

UPI is India's most widely used digital payments gateway, with almost 85% of retail digital transactions being facilitated through it.

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