India’s UPI at 10: Why Millions Still Don’t Use the World’s Biggest Digital Payments System

As India’s flagship digital payments platform nears a decade, the success of the Unified Payments Interface is unmistakable. In November alone, it processed over 20 billion transactions, with nearly 500 million unique users — close to half of India’s addressable population. Yet, beneath these impressive aggregates lies a quieter question that will shape UPI’s next phase: who are the millions still not using it, and why?

A decade of scale, but an incomplete picture

UPI’s rise has been central to India’s digital public infrastructure (DPI) story. From small kirana shops to large e-commerce platforms, it has reshaped everyday transactions by making real-time, low-cost digital payments ubiquitous. However, the public data available on UPI remains largely system-centric — focusing on transaction volumes, values, and technical performance indicators such as uptime and failure rates.

While these metrics capture efficiency and resilience, they say little about who is being left out. There is no publicly available national dataset that shows how UPI adoption varies across regions, income groups, age cohorts, or gender. As a result, policymakers and researchers lack the granular evidence needed to design targeted interventions for the next stage of growth.

Why understanding non-users now matters

UPI’s early expansion benefited from a combination of smartphone growth, bank account penetration through Jan Dhan, and aggressive merchant onboarding. But future gains will not come as easily. Reaching those still outside the system requires moving beyond scale-driven metrics to inclusion-focused insights.

Without knowing where non-users are concentrated — whether in rural areas with patchy connectivity, among older populations unfamiliar with digital interfaces, or within households where smartphone access is shared — policy risks becoming blunt and inefficient. Aggregate numbers can mask persistent gaps that demand tailored responses.

What limited surveys already tell us

Some insight comes from a recent in-sample study by Artha Global, which surveyed 3,200 personal users, 800 micro-merchants, and 800 non-users across four districts in Maharashtra and Bihar. Though not nationally representative, the findings are instructive: UPI non-users are not a homogeneous group.

Instead, they fall into distinct categories, each facing different barriers. This layered reality challenges the assumption that non-use is simply a matter of infrastructure gaps or resistance to technology.

The first gap: those who have never heard of UPI

Perhaps the most striking finding is that awareness itself remains uneven. Around 57% of non-users surveyed had not heard of UPI at all. This suggests that even in states with relatively high digital maturity, information gaps persist.

Such findings underline the importance of targeted communication rather than assuming universal familiarity. Identifying districts or social groups where awareness is lowest could help refine outreach campaigns, especially in regions where basic digital and financial services have expanded but usage has not followed.

The second gap: awareness without access or confidence

A second group consists of people who know about UPI but cannot realistically use it. Barriers here are structural or capability-related: lack of personal smartphone access, unreliable internet connectivity, or low digital confidence.

While nearly all respondents in this group had bank accounts, about 60% cited the absence of a smartphone or discomfort in using one as the primary obstacle. These constraints are often gendered. Women, in particular, were less likely to own personal devices or feel confident navigating digital interfaces. Addressing this segment requires investments not only in infrastructure, but also in device access, digital literacy, and social norms around technology use.

The third gap: access-ready but unconvinced users

The final group has all the prerequisites — smartphones, connectivity, and bank accounts — yet chooses not to use UPI. Their reluctance stems from perceived complexity, usability challenges, or concerns about safety and fraud.

For this segment, more infrastructure will not solve the problem. What is needed instead are simpler interfaces, stronger consumer protection mechanisms, and trust-building measures that make digital payments feel safer and more intuitive than cash.

Why a national baseline study is the missing link

Taken together, these three categories — the unaware, the access-constrained, and the access-ready but unconvinced — point to the need for differentiated policy responses. A national baseline study on UPI users and non-users could map where each group is concentrated and why non-use persists.

Such data would allow policymakers to move from broad-brush initiatives to precision interventions, while also enabling longitudinal tracking of adoption over time. As India looks beyond headline transaction numbers, the long-term success of UPI will depend not just on how much it is used, but on who gets to use it — and who still does not.