10 years of UPI: Cashless, not cash-free
A decade after the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) was launched, it has rewired how Indians pay for everything from groceries to gold. Yet currency in circulation has hit a record Rs 41.7 lakh crore, presenting policymakers with what Reserve Bank of India Deputy Governor Shirish Chandra Murmu referred to as the “cash paradox”: a country paying digitally like never before, while stacking up more physical currency than ever.
The ambition was never modest. At the UPI pilot launch in April 2016, then-RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan declared: “I have said the Indian banking system needed a revolution. The revolution is upon us.
