Worldline India Digital Payments Report 1H 2025

The 1H 2025 India Digital Payments Report highlights an important phase in the country’s digital payment journey, reflecting strong growth and ongoing innovation. India’s digital payments ecosystem surged ahead in the first half of 2025, led by an exceptional 35% year-on-year increase in UPI transactions, which reached a staggering 106.36 billion, valued at ₹143.34 trillion. This data marks a shift towards a new payment paradigm focused on accessibility, frequency, and inclusion, reshaping how consumers and merchants engage daily.

A strong payments infrastructure drives this growth. The UPI QR network more than doubled to 678 million, while POS terminals rose 29% to 11.2 million and Bharat QR 12% to 6.72 million, creating the world’s largest merchant network. Near-zero-cost onboarding spurred rapid adoption among micro-merchants and kirana stores nationwide. Behavioral shifts underscore this transformation. Frequent, low-value transactions now dominate, with the average UPI ticket size falling to ₹1,348. Person-to-Merchant payments surged 37%, fueled by the “Kirana Effect” as millions of small digital payments replaced card swipes. Meanwhile, credit card spending rose 23% to over ₹2.2 trillion, while debit card spending largely shifted to cash withdrawals.

Innovation is reshaping convenience and inclusion. Biometric and PIN-less UPI pilots enable frictionless onboarding, while chat-based and auto-pay journeys simplify in-app payments. Embedded finance, credit-on-UPI, and new international corridors with markets like Singapore and the UAE point to a seamless future of cross-border payments. Practically, these trends reflect in thriving real-world use cases: FASTag’s electronic tolling expanded into parking and campus access with 111 million issued tags and 2.32 billion transactions, while Bharat Connect emerged as the backbone for recurring payments, witnessing 76% growth in transaction volume to 1.49 billion and a 220% surge in value to ₹6.9 trillion.

At this pivotal juncture, Worldline’s secure, resilient, and omnichannel payment technology ecosystem powers stakeholders across the spectrum from micro-merchants to large enterprises, enabling confidence in every transaction and driving India’s path toward a sustainable, inclusive digital economy. We present the 1H 2025 India Digital Payments Report. It presents a comprehensive view of India’s digital payments transformation, tracing how UPI, card usage, and mobile-first solutions have reshaped both merchant and consumer behavior across physical and online channels. 

It highlights shifts in spending categories, growing rural participation, and emerging innovations like biometric UPI, SoftPoS, and credit-on-UPI that are steering the country toward a seamless and inclusive payments future.