India’s cash in circulation hits ₹43.02 lakh crore even as UPI value reaches ₹29.9 lakh crore
Cash in circulation rose 12% year on year to ₹43.02 lakh crore in May 2026, alongside ₹272 lakh crore in digital-payment value. UPI processed 23.6 billion transactions worth ₹29.9 lakh crore, with PhonePe and Google Pay accounting for 82.6% of UPI value.
What happened
India’s cash in circulation reached a five-year high despite continued UPI growth. PhonePe and Google Pay dominated 82.6% of UPI payment value in May, while RBI
Key facts
- Currency in circulation: ₹43.02 lakh crore in May 2026, up 12% year-on-year from ₹38.35 lakh crore
- Digital-payment value: ₹272 lakh crore in May 2026, up 11% year-on-year from ₹246 lakh crore
- UPI: 23.6 billion transactions worth ₹29.9 lakh crore in May 2026
- PhonePe UPI value: ₹14.67 lakh crore
- Google Pay UPI value: ₹10.03 lakh crore
- Paytm UPI value: ₹1.99 lakh crore
- CRED UPI value: ₹61,002 crore
- Navi UPI value: ₹43,602 crore
- PhonePe and Google Pay combined UPI-value share: 82.6%
- CRED UPI-volume share: about 0.7%; value share: around 2%
Why this matters
Prioritize partnerships and integrations with PhonePe and Google Pay, which control 82.6% of UPI value, while retaining cash-enabled capabilities across acquired or partnered retail networks.
What to watch
- Monthly RBI currency-in-circulation growth versus nominal consumption growth.
- UPI transaction value and volume growth, especially the share of person-to-merchant payments and repeat retail usage.
- PhonePe and Google Pay market-share changes, outages, settlement issues or new merchant monetization products.
- RBI or NPCI changes to UPI pricing, MDR, credit-on-UPI, delegated payments, offline payments or transaction limits.
- Retailer cash-handling cost per transaction, cash shrinkage rates and bank cash-deposit availability by city tier.
- Adoption of UPI-linked credit, RuPay credit cards on UPI and merchant-funded offers that could shift higher-value baskets from cash.
- Maintain resilient cash and UPI acceptance at every store; avoid cashless-only policies outside tightly controlled formats.
- Measure tender mix by store cluster, basket size, customer cohort and daypart to identify where cash handling can be reduced without losing conversion.
- Upgrade UPI operations beyond static QR codes: dynamic QR, instant reconciliation, refund workflows, payment-status recovery and offline fallback procedures.
- Negotiate PSP partnerships around value-added services such as loyalty, offers, settlement visibility and merchant credit, while avoiding single-provider dependency.
- Reprice and redesign cash-management operations for higher currency volumes, including more frequent collections, counterfeit controls and store-level cash exposure limits.