# UPI processes nearly 80 crore daily transactions: Sitharaman 2026-10-25T14:41:48+00:00 | Governance | Indian Opinion Desk Corroboration: 2 independent outlets Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Sunday, 25 October that UPI now handles nearly 80 crore transactions daily, or over 2,400 crore a month, making it the world's largest real-time payment system. She noted that annual transaction volume has grown roughly 13,000 times since 2016-17. Speaking at the inauguration of the Reserve Bank of India's Greenfield Data Centre and Training Institute in Khordha, Odisha, by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Sitharaman described data centres as the 'vault of the digital age'. She said the government granted infrastructure status to data centres in 2022 and that the Union Budget 2026-27 announced a tax holiday for foreign firms offering global cloud services through data centres in India. The new RBI campus will house RTGS and NEFT systems, along with a training institute and a research wing focused on cybersecurity, AI and data centres. Sitharaman said the fintech ecosystem built around UPI is expanding access to credit, insurance and investment products for first-time users. ## Indian Opinion Analysis Both Economic Times and Yes Punjab News present virtually identical wire-style reports of Sitharaman's speech, attributing all facts to her and offering no independent commentary or critique. The coverage is uniform straight reporting. The key numbers, 80 crore daily, 2,400 crore monthly, 13,000-fold growth since 2016-17, are identical across both outlets. Neither source questions the figures, discusses any failure or limitation of UPI, or includes an opposing voice. The balanced reading is that the event was a ceremonial inauguration at which the government chose to highlight UPI's scale and policy support for data centres, the uniform coverage simply relays those claims without scrutiny. ## Coverage Coverage: 2 sources, 2 neutral - economictimes.indiatimes.com (neutral report) Straightforward wire-style report of Sitharaman's speech, no critique or opposing view. - yespunjab.com (neutral report) Identical straight reporting of Sitharaman's remarks, no independent framing. This brief was synthesised by AI from the 2 sources linked above, so one read covers every framing they carry. Tags: data centre, Nirmala Sitharaman, Odisha, Reserve Bank of India, UPI Canonical: https://indianopinion.org/upi-processes-nearly-80-crore-daily-transactions-sitharaman/ License: Summary and commentary (c) Indian Opinion, reusable with attribution. Facts belong to the linked sources. Cite: https://indianopinion.org/upi-processes-nearly-80-crore-daily-transactions-sitharaman/#story-in-brief How this brief was made: an AI model read the reports linked above and wrote this summary and analysis, which were published automatically. Published briefs are sampled every hour by an automated quality check; the editor verifies its findings and approves corrections, and corrected briefs carry a dated correction line. Stance labels are editorial classifications of how each outlet framed this story, assigned by the same model, not ratings of the outlets. We do no original reporting. Methodology: https://indianopinion.org/ai-use-policy/