Bhubaneswar: India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has entered an entirely new league. Fresh data tabled in Parliament on Monday shows Indians made a staggering 24,161.69 crore UPI transactions worth Rs 314.23 lakh crore in FY2025-26, nearly five times the volume recorded just four years ago.

While the Centre admitted in Parliament that it does not maintain state-wise UPI user data, an SBI Research study released earlier provides the first granular state-wise digital payment footprint, allowing an extrapolation of Odisha's likely contribution to India's UPI revolution.

Using SBI's July 2025 state share as the baseline, Odisha is estimated to have clocked nearly 3.38-3.45 billion (338-345 crore) UPI transactions during FY2025-26, accounting for roughly 1.4% of India's total UPI volume.

Odisha's Silent Digital Revolution

SBI Research had estimated Odisha's UPI transaction share at 1.4% of national transaction volume in July 2025, with about 264 million transactions during that month.

Applying the same proportion to Parliament's FY26 national data:

Indicator	India FY26	Odisha Estimate
UPI Volume	24,161.69 crore	338.26 crore
Share	100%	1.4%
Transaction Value	Rs 314.23 lakh crore	Rs 4.40 lakh crore (approx.)

The estimate assumes Odisha maintained broadly the same share during FY26. Since NPCI has not released updated state-wise figures, the numbers remain analytical projections rather than official statistics.

One Transaction Every Three Seconds

The extrapolated numbers reveal how deeply digital payments have penetrated Odisha.

A volume of 338 crore annual transactions translates into:

• Nearly 92.6 million transactions every day
• About 38.6 lakh transactions every hour
• Roughly 10,700 transactions every second

This is remarkable for a state whose digital payment ecosystem was largely urban-centric just a few years ago.

Fivefold National Surge

Parliament data shows India's UPI journey has been extraordinary.

Financial Year	Volume (Crore)	Growth
FY22	4,595.61

—

FY23

8,371.44

82%

FY24

13,112.95

57%

FY25

18,586.60

42%

FY26

24,161.69

30%

Within four years, annual UPI transactions have increased by 426%, while transaction value has jumped from Rs 84.16 lakh crore to Rs 314.23 lakh crore.

Where Odisha Stands

According to SBI Research, Odisha occupied the 15th position among states in UPI transaction volume with a 1.4% national share, identical to its share in transaction value.

The state trailed digital heavyweights like:

• Maharashtra (9.8%)
• Karnataka (5.5%)
• Uttar Pradesh (5.3%)
• Telangana (4.1%)
• Tamil Nadu (4.0%)

Yet Odisha outperformed several eastern and central states including Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand in digital payment adoption.

Cash Is Quietly Losing the Battle

One of the most striking findings of SBI Research is that UPI is no longer merely complementing cash – it is replacing it.

The study found that in India's retail payment ecosystem (UPI plus ATM withdrawals using debit cards), UPI's share has surged from just 40% in November 2019 to 91% by May 2025, indicating an overwhelming shift toward digital payments.

For Odisha, where QR codes have proliferated from urban supermarkets to roadside tea stalls, weekly village haats and temple donation counters, the trend suggests digital payments have become mainstream rather than aspirational.

Groceries Drive the Digital Economy

The SBI report also overturns a popular perception that UPI is dominated by high-value online shopping.

Instead:

• Grocery purchases account for 24.5% of transaction volume.
• Restaurants and fast-food outlets together contribute nearly 19%.
• Fuel stations, pharmacies and telecom payments dominate everyday usage.

The findings imply that Odisha's digital payment boom is likely being fuelled more by neighbourhood kirana stores, vegetable vendors, pharmacies and eateries than by e-commerce platforms.

Beyond Cities

The biggest significance for Odisha lies beyond Bhubaneswar, Cuttack or Rourkela.

Rapid expansion of:

• Jan Dhan accounts,
• affordable smartphones,
• inexpensive mobile data,
• QR-code acceptance,
• government welfare transfers, and
• merchant digitisation

has steadily widened UPI adoption into semi-urban and rural markets.

Combined with zero Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) on most BHIM-UPI transactions and government incentives for low-value merchant payments, digital acceptance has become economically attractive even for micro-merchants.

The Big Picture

Parliament also disclosed that 55.49 crore users were onboarded onto the UPI platform by June 2026, while UPI has now expanded internationally through payment linkages with countries including Singapore, France, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, UAE, Bhutan, Qatar, Greece and Cambodia.

For Odisha, the absence of official state-wise FY26 data may obscure the exact numbers, but the SBI baseline suggests one unmistakable trend: the state's digital economy is no longer riding on the margins of India's UPI success. If the trajectory holds, Odisha is now likely processing well over 330 crore digital payments annually, making QR-code transactions an everyday habit across villages, towns and cities alike. 

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