NPCI states that the UPI pilot was launched on 11 April 2016 by then RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan. The next milestone subsequently recorded is 25 August 2016 – as the point at which UPI went live.
UPI’s ten-year journey
| Date | Milestone |
| 11 Apr 2016 | NPCI launches UPI pilot with 21 member banks |
| 25 Aug 2016 | UPI goes live for customers after RBI approval of the public launch |
| FY2016-17 | 1.78 crore annual transactions worth ₹0.07 lakh crore |
| Apr 2020 | NPCI International Payments Ltd, or NIPL, incorporated to take UPI and other NPCI systems overseas |
| Jul 2021 | Bhutan becomes an early overseas UPI merchant-payment market |
| Aug 2021 | UPI merchant acceptance begins in Singapore |
| Apr 2022 | UAE merchant acceptance goes live |
| Feb 2023 | UPI-PayNow India-Singapore P2P linkage goes live |
| Feb-Mar 2024 | France, Mauritius, Sri Lanka and Nepal join the overseas merchant-payment footprint |
| Sep 2025 | Qatar UPI merchant acceptance |
| May 2026 | Greece-India P2P remittance connection goes live |
| Jun 2026 | Cambodia merchant acceptance and Nepal P2P linkage |
| 30 Jul 2026 | Maldives Favara-UPI real-time remittance corridor goes live |
| Jul 2026 | UPI reaches record 23.66 billion monthly transactions |
| 25 Aug 2026 | UPI completes a decade since its public go-live |