THEBUSINESSBYTES BUREAU

BHUBANESWAR, OCTOBER 25, 2026

 India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has scaled up to nearly 80 crore transactions a day, reflecting the country’s rapid digital payments growth, while the newly inaugurated RBI Greenfield Data Centre and Training Institute in Odisha will bolster the technological backbone of the financial system, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Sunday.

Addressing the inauguration of the RBI facility by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Khordha district, Sitharaman said UPI has emerged as the world’s largest real-time payment system, with its annual transaction volume growing around 13,000-fold since 2016-17.

The digital payments platform now handles more than 2,400 crore transactions a month, reflecting the rapid expansion and growing adoption of India’s digital payments ecosystem, she said.

The expansion of UPI has also fostered a vibrant fintech ecosystem, enabling millions of first-time users across the country to access credit, insurance and investment opportunities, the finance minister said.

Highlighting the strategic importance of digital infrastructure, Sitharaman described data centres as the “vaults of the digital age” and said the government had introduced several measures to support the sector.

Data centres were granted infrastructure status in 2022, while the Union Budget 2026-27 announced a tax holiday for foreign companies providing global cloud services from data centres located in India, she said.

The newly inaugurated RBI facility will house the central bank’s mission-critical systems, including the Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) and National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) systems, Sitharaman said.

The facility is expected to strengthen the technological backbone of the country’s financial system and ensure robust infrastructure for critical banking and payment operations.

The campus will also house a training institute with a dedicated research wing focused on developing expertise in emerging areas such as cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and data centres, she said.

The establishment of the facility in Odisha marks an important step towards strengthening the resilience of India’s financial infrastructure, amid the growing scale of digital transactions and the increasing importance of secure, reliable payment systems.