UPI transactions rebound in May with 18.68 bn payments; 33% yearly surge

Unified Payments Interface (UPI) recorded a strong recovery in May 2025, processing 18.68 billion transactions, up from 17.89 billion in April, according to data released by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) on June 1. The May figures also mark a 33 per cent year-on-year (YoY) jump compared to 14.03 billion transactions in the same month last year.

 

By value, UPI transactions rose to ₹25.14 lakh crore in May, a 5 per cent increase from ₹23.95 lakh crore in April. This also reflects a 23 per cent YoY rise from ₹20.45 lakh crore in May 2024. The average daily transaction volume stood at 602 million, while the average daily transaction value reached ₹81,106 crore.

 

 

The rebound follows a dip in April, when UPI volumes declined from 18.3 billion in March. That slump was attributed to multiple service disruptions that affected payment flows. 

 

Notably, a major outage on April 12 was caused by excessive API requests from banks, which overwhelmed the system and temporarily reduced transaction success rates.

 

Some UPI outage incidents were also reported in May, including at PhonePe due to a network capacity shortfall. However, they did not affect the overall transactions.

 

UPI, launched in 2016 by NPCI, has become India’s dominant digital payment method, fuelled by smartphone proliferation, government-led digitisation efforts post-demonetisation, and the entry of major tech players like Google Pay, PhonePe, and Paytm. 

 

NPCI steps up UPI vigil

 

Following last month's outages, NPCI has stepped up its supervision of the UPI to prevent future disruptions caused.

 

In a circular issued on May 21, NPCI outlined operational guidelines for 10 application programming interfaces (APIs) linked to UPI, where it asked payment service providers and acquiring banks to monitor and moderate their use of these APIs.

 

The move followed a root cause analysis conducted in April, which found that banks overloaded the system by sending too many 'check transaction status' API calls, contributing to system downtime.