PhonePe’s CEO confirms that India’s Unified Payments Interface will continue to offer free transactions, fuelling industry discussion on how to fund the rapidly growing infrastructure amid rising transaction volumes and security needs.
PhonePe has moved to calm concern over whether India’s Unified Payments Interface will begin charging consumers, with chief executive Sameer Nigam saying users will continue to make UPI payments for free. The clarification comes as debate intensifies over how the country’s fast-growing digital payments rails can pay for the infrastructure, security and innovation needed to keep pace with rising use.
Nigam said on X that the issue is not a change to the basic design of UPI, but the need to build viable business models around a system that now handles more than 9,000 transactions a second. He argued that keeping the network reliable requires steady spending from banks, payment firms, fintech companies, the National Payments Corporation of India and the Reserve Bank of India.
He also pointed to fraud prevention as one of the biggest cost centres for the ecosystem. As transaction volumes rise, he said, UPI becomes more attractive to bad actors, making resilience, uptime and security essential to everyday use by millions of Indians.
The comments fit a broader industry conversation about how UPI platforms monetise services while leaving consumer payments free. Research on the sector notes that companies such as PhonePe have been broadening revenue streams through merchant services, advertising and value-added products, while PhonePe’s own annual report frames the company’s strategy around building a durable digital payments ecosystem in India.
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