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The transition from cash to digital payments is an international trend, but very few systems have impacted people's financial activities as much as India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI). UPI is different from other payment innovations developed by the private sector. Today, it is one of the fastest real-time payment systems worldwide, handling trillions of transactions each month.
In the latest episode of the Analytics Insight Podcast, host Priya Dialani explores this transformation with Shivam Shah, co-founder of Piston. The discussion centers on how UPI changed India’s digital payments landscape and what the US should learn from this shift.
Priya starts the conversation by highlighting how India has advanced beyond traditional banking systems and developed a real-time, mobile-first payment system. Drawing from his personal experience, Shivam described UPI as “absolutely revolutionary.” He further shared his experience, saying, “I’ve seen wallets and then UPI really reshape our digital payment networks.”
Shivam opined that policy-led coordination is one of the major factors behind UPI's success in India. The co-founder of Piston mentioned, “The Indian government decided to take a slightly centralized approach.” This acceptance generated immediate network effects that, in turn, fueled adoption at unprecedented scale.
Shivam pointed out that UPI was developed with the “India-first” and mobile-first approach, which coincided with the quick rise in smartphone use during that period. Moreover, the decision to make UPI transactions free was another important factor in attracting customers. “That was one of the big drivers away from Visa and MasterCard,” he noted.
In contrast, the payment system is still fragmented. To him, the absence of a central coordinating body among numerous banks and older card networks has been the principal reason for the slow acceptance of real-time payment apps like FedNow.
Shivam’s experience with UPI directly influenced the creation of Piston. After experiencing fuel fraud and inefficiencies firsthand as a logistics operator, he and his co-founder Vikram planned to create a modern B2B payment network in the US. “We’re essentially building a payment network layer,” Shivam said.
On a global scale, real-time payments are becoming increasingly widespread. India’s UPI, however, is a powerful blueprint, showing how the combination of sound policy, open architecture, and mobile-first design can enable massive-scale innovation.
