Transactions on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) rose 34% year-on-year to 17.89 billion in April, reflecting continued momentum in digital payments. The total transaction value also climbed 22% to Rs 23.95 lakh crore, according to data released by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) on Thursday.
However, on a sequential basis, the number of transactions slipped 2.2%, while the transaction value dropped 3.3% compared to March. Industry experts attributed the sequential slowdown to technical glitches.
“There were multiple outages in UPI services during March and April, which disrupted customer transactions,” said the digital banking head at a private bank. “Frequent service disruptions can erode user confidence and push some customers back to cash-based transactions.”
He added that while digital adoption is growing rapidly, sustained outages on the NPCI-operated UPI could hamper the momentum of digital payments in the country.
Due to the outages between March-end and mid-April, many customers complained that they were unable to perform payments through apps of Google Pay, PhonePe, Paytm and other such companies.
In FY25, the value of transactions increased 30% to Rs 260.56 lakh crore compared to Rs 199.96 lakh crore FY24. Volume increased 42% to 185.85 billion transactions from 131.14 billion in FY24.
The NPCI monthly data showed that the Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) transactions declined by 3% to 449 million in April from 462 million in March. IMPS transactions recorded an 18% year-on-year decline in April.
The number of daily IMPS transactions in April rose to 14.98 million from 14.89 million in March. The transaction amount reached Rs 20,722 crore in April, compared to Rs 21,542 crore in the previous month. Compared to April 2024, volume was down 18%, while value rose by 5%.
FASTag transactions, widely used for toll and parking transactions, rose marginally to 383 million in April 2025 from 379 million in March. The transaction value also increased to Rs 6,801 crore from Rs 6,800 crore. April figures were up 17% in volume and 22% in value compared to April 2024.
Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman recently urged stakeholders, including the NPCI, to target achieving 1 billion UPI transactions per day within the next 2-3 years, while also accelerating the platform’s internationalisation.
UPI has witnessed exponential growth in recent years. Between FY20 and FY25, UPI transactions grew at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 72%. In the last three years alone, about 260 million new users and 55 million new merchants have been onboarded.