New book highlights UPI's role as India's critical digital infrastructure

IIIT-Hyderabad releases ‘Cashless Nation’, a detailed account of how India’s Unified Payments Interface evolved into a vital platform for financial inclusion and digital commerce post-demonetisation.

IIIT-Hyderabad has released a new book on the rise of India’s Unified Payments Interface, framing UPI as one of the country’s most consequential digital infrastructure projects. “Cashless Nation: How UPI Changed Everything”, written by Santanu Paul and B. Sambamurthy and published by Penguin Random House India, traces how a payments system that is now used by everyone from street vendors to major e-commerce firms became central to everyday commerce across the country.

According to Penguin Random House, the book follows the long buildout of India’s digital payments ecosystem and examines the role of technology choices, institutional decisions and execution in turning UPI into a national platform. The publisher says the authors draw on interviews with people involved in the system’s development, while also placing UPI’s growth within the wider push for financial inclusion. Penguin also notes that the book revisits the disruption caused by demonetisation in November 2016, which helped accelerate the shift towards digital payments.

At the Hyderabad launch, former Reserve Bank of India governor D. Subbarao described UPI as more than a payment tool, saying it had become open, interoperable public infrastructure that supported inclusion and private innovation. IIIT-Hyderabad director Sandeep Shukla said the book captured an important shift in India’s move towards a cashless economy. Both authors bring experience from India’s financial and technology sectors, with backgrounds linked to NPCI and IDRBT, giving the book an insider’s view of how the payments system evolved.