New Delhi, Aug 26:
The BJP on Tuesday launched a sharp attack on the Congress over its past criticism of the Unified Payments Interface, as the digital payment system completed 10 years since its rollout.
BJP national spokesperson Sambit Patra said former Finance Minister P Chidambaram had earlier questioned the usefulness of UPI and argued that street vendors and people in rural areas would find it difficult to use.
Patra said the rapid adoption of digital payments by small traders, vegetable vendors and street-side food sellers had disproved such predictions.
He claimed that UPI had grown from 1.78 crore transactions worth Rs 0.07 lakh crore in 2016-17 to 24,162 crore transactions valued at Rs 314 lakh crore in 2025-26.
The BJP leader said UPI had become the world’s largest real-time digital payment platform and was now available in 11 countries, with the number of participating banks rising from 44 at launch to more than 700.
The Congress hit back, saying the foundations for India’s digital payments infrastructure had been laid during the tenure of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.