UPSC Prelims Practice Questions — UPI Completes 10 Years of Digital Payments Revolution- Globally Recognised as World’s Largest Real‑Time Payment System
Q1. Which one of the following correctly describes the position of the Reserve Bank of India with respect to the Unified Payments Interface (UPI)?
- A. It is the sole owner and operator of UPI, which it runs directly as a departmental payment system of the central bank
- B. It is the regulator of UPI, which is operated by an umbrella organisation promoted by the RBI along with the Indian Banks' Association
- C. It is the single largest shareholder among the promoter banks of the company that operates UPI and chairs its governing board
- D. It merely licenses UPI applications and exercises no statutory authority over the entity that operates the UPI platform
Q2. How many banks were live on the Unified Payments Interface during its first year of operation, FY 2016-17?
Q3. The National Payments Corporation of India was incorporated as a 'not-for-profit' company with an initial group of promoter banks numbering:
- A. Six
- B. Eight
- C. Ten
- D. Thirteen
Q4. Consider the following statements regarding the international recognition accorded to UPI:
1. An IMF report of June 2025 titled 'Growing Retail Digital Payments (The Value of Interoperability)' recognised UPI as the world's largest retail fast payment system.
2. UPI's share of roughly 49 per cent in global real-time payment transactions is attributed to the ACI Worldwide report 'Prime Time for Real-Time'.
3. The IMF's Finance & Development feature of September 2025 described UPI as processing more than 19 billion transactions every month.
4. The IMF's ranking of UPI as the world's largest such system was based on the aggregate value, rather than the number, of transactions routed through it.
Which of the above is/are NOT correct?
- An IMF report of June 2025 titled 'Growing Retail Digital Payments (The Value of Interoperability)' recognised UPI as the world's largest retail fast payment system.
- UPI's share of roughly 49 per cent in global real-time payment transactions is attributed to the ACI Worldwide report 'Prime Time for Real-Time'.
- The IMF's Finance & Development feature of September 2025 described UPI as processing more than 19 billion transactions every month.
- The IMF's ranking of UPI as the world's largest such system was based on the aggregate value, rather than the number, of transactions routed through it.
- A. 1 and 2
- B. 3 only
- C. 4 only
- D. 2 and 4
Q5. The IMF has ranked UPI as the world's largest retail fast payment system 'by transaction volume'. In such rankings, transaction volume refers to which one of the following?
- A. The aggregate rupee value of the funds transferred through the system over a given period
- B. The count of individual payment instructions successfully processed by the system over a period
- C. The peak number of payment instructions the system is technically able to process per second
- D. The proportion of a country's total retail payments that are settled through that particular system
Q6. Consider the following statements about the growth of UPI between FY 2016-17 and FY 2025-26:
1. Annual transaction volume rose from about 2 crore to over 24,162 crore transactions.
2. Annual transaction value rose from about Rs 0.07 lakh crore to about Rs 314 lakh crore.
3. The number of banks live on the platform rose from 44 to 703.
4. Throughout this period participation in UPI remained restricted exclusively to scheduled commercial banks, cooperative banks and payments banks being barred.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
- Annual transaction volume rose from about 2 crore to over 24,162 crore transactions.
- Annual transaction value rose from about Rs 0.07 lakh crore to about Rs 314 lakh crore.
- The number of banks live on the platform rose from 44 to 703.
- Throughout this period participation in UPI remained restricted exclusively to scheduled commercial banks, cooperative banks and payments banks being barred.
- A. 1 and 3 only
- B. 1, 2 and 3 only
- C. 2 and 4 only
- D. 1, 2, 3 and 4
Q7. UPI's monthly transaction count crossed the 2,000 crore (20 billion) mark for the first time in which one of the following months?
- A. August 2025
- B. October 2024
- C. March 2025
- D. January 2026
Q8. As stated in Parliament in February 2026, India has concluded MoUs or agreements for cooperation on India Stack / Digital Public Infrastructure with how many countries?
Q9. When it is officially stated that 'UPI is live' in a foreign country such as France or Mauritius, this most precisely means which one of the following?
- A. Indian users can pay at participating merchants in that country through their existing Indian bank accounts and UPI applications
- B. That country has adopted the UPI software stack as its own domestic retail payment system in place of its national system
- C. Residents of that country may open rupee-denominated accounts with Indian banks in order to make domestic payments within India
- D. That country's currency is settled directly against the rupee on NPCI's platform without recourse to any correspondent banking arrangement
Q10. In the sense in which the Government of India uses the expression, 'Digital Public Infrastructure' is best defined as which one of the following?
- A. Foundational, interoperable and secure digital systems that let the State and private actors deliver services at population scale
- B. The physical network of optical fibre cables, data centres and telecom towers that carries a country's digital traffic
- C. Software applications owned by the government and released to citizens free of charge under open-source licensing terms
- D. The body of statutes and rules governing data protection, cybersecurity and electronic transactions within a jurisdiction
Q11. Consider the following statements about India's fund-transfer systems:
1. RTGS prescribes a minimum remittance of Rs 2 lakh and has no upper ceiling.
2. NEFT prescribes no minimum amount and settles on a deferred net settlement basis in half-hourly batches.
3. IMPS carries a per-transaction ceiling of Rs 5 lakh for all channels other than SMS and IVR.
4. The general per-transaction ceiling in UPI is Rs 1 lakh, which rises to Rs 5 lakh for Initial Public Offering and Retail Direct Scheme payments.
How many of the above statements are correct?
- A. Only one
- B. Only two
- C. Only three
- D. All four