After revolutionising how India pays, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is now setting its sights on transforming how India borrows.At CNBC-TV18’s Global Leadership Summit 2025 in Mumbai on Friday, November 7, NPCI MD & CEO Dilip Asbe unveiled plans for a “credit revolution” powered by UPI data and the proposed Unified Lending Interface (ULI), a platform designed to simplify and accelerate retail lending.“Just as UPI changed how consumers spend their own money, credit on UPI will change how they borrow,” Asbe said.
The ULI aims to leverage real-time UPI transaction data for credit scoring, decisioning and collections, all at near-zero cost.Early pilots are already linking credit cards and pre-approved credit lines directly to UPI, enabling seamless borrowing through familiar interfaces.“It becomes fast, short, and deeply connected,” Asbe added. “When the consumer is in real-time contact with you, step-up decisions become instant.”A platform built on scale and trustThe timing couldn’t be more opportune. In October 2025, UPI hit a record high of ₹27.28 lakh crore in transaction value and 20.7 billion in volume, fuelled by festive spending. This marked a 16% year-on-year growth and a 9.5% month-on-month increase, according to NPCI data.The average daily transaction volume stood at 668 million, with a daily value of ₹87,993 crore — underscoring UPI’s dominance in India’s digital economy.
The NPCI chief said early pilots are already allowing credit cards and pre-approved lines to be linked directly to UPI, letting consumers borrow or pay seamlessly through familiar interfaces.“It becomes fast, short, and deeply connected,” he added. “When the consumer is in real-time contact with you, step-up decisions become instant.”Asbe argued that the combination of UPI’s scale, transaction data and RBI’s credit enablement policy could bring formal credit access to millions of first-time borrowers, especially in small towns and tier-3 markets.“This is not an incremental change,” he said. “It’s a different game altogether.”Today, UPI accounts for 85% of all digital transactions in India and powers nearly 50% of global real-time digital payments.It’s live in seven countries, including the UAE, Singapore, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, France, and Mauritius — with France marking UPI’s first step into Europe.The credit revolution: AI meets embedded financeEchoing Asbe’s sentiment, Razorpay’s Harshil Mathur called AI the “missing step” that could finally make embedded finance mainstream.“The hardest part of distributing credit at scale has been underwriting,” he said.“AI can help assess individuals using behavioural and transactional data — cutting the cost of credit dramatically.”If UPI made payments invisible, NPCI now wants to make borrowing effortless — signalling a shift from India’s payments revolution to its credit revolution.
Source link
