New Delhi, April 6 (IANS) Unified Payments Interface (UPI) processed 228.5 billion transactions in 2025, marking a 33 per cent year‑on‑year increase, while total transaction value touched Rs. 299.74 trillion, a report said on Monday.

The report from Worldline said that UPI’s growth was broad‑based, with both person-to-person (P2P) and person-to-merchant (P2M) transactions rising, with the latter recording a 34 per cent growth to 143.82 billion transactions.

The overall average ticket size for UPI fell 9 per cent to Rs. 1,314, while merchant payments’ average ticket size dropped to Rs. 592, reflecting the digitisation of small-ticket purchases.

“Reduction in ticket size signals the migration of previously cash-driven transactions — from street vendors to local services — into the digital economy,” the report said.

Merchant acceptance infrastructure expanded in 2025, with UPI QR codes increasing 15 per cent YoY to 731.38 million.

Point‑of‑sale terminals grew 15 per cent to 11.48 million. Bharat QR deployments eased slightly as the ecosystem consolidated around UPI-led acceptance models, the report said.

“India’s digital payments ecosystem is entering a new phase of maturity, where scale is being complemented by structure,” Worldline India Chief Executive Officer Ramesh Narasimhan said.

The report revealed a maturing payments landscape where multiple payment rails — UPI, cards, and recurring payment platforms such as Bharat BillPay — are increasingly working in complementary roles to power a fully digital economy.

India’s merchant ecosystem is increasingly becoming “QR-first, PoS-as-needed,” enabling even the smallest merchants to accept digital payments with minimal infrastructure.

Credit card transactions increased 27 per cent to 5.69 billion, and debit card volumes eased 23 per cent, reflecting the migration of small-value transactions to UPI. Online credit card payments reached Rs. 14.53 trillion.

Recurring digital payments are growing rapidly as households move towards automated bill management with payments on Bharat BillPay touching 3.05 billion and value at Rs. 14.84 trillion, up 40 per cent and 93 per cent respectively.

The platform is seeing strong adoption across categories such as education fees, insurance payments, EMI repayments, and subscription services, signalling the rise of a “set-and-forget” digital payments model, the report said.

–IANS

aar/vd