India, Aug. 25 -- The Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which was launched on August 25, 2016, has completed a decade of transforming India's digital payments landscape, emerging as the backbone of the country's digital payments ecosystem and a global benchmark for real-time payments.

Annual UPI transaction volume rose from 1.78 crore in 2016-17 to more than 24,162 crore in 2025-26, an almost 13,000-fold increase, the finance ministry said in a statement.

During the same period, transaction value jumped from Rs 0.07 lakh crore to around Rs 314 lakh crore, representing a more than 4,000-fold rise, it said.

Developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) under the regulatory oversight of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), UP...