UPI is booming but many women still left behind, finds study
A ₹2 sachet of betel nuts or a ₹10 cup of piping-hot tea can be paid for digitally at Pujari Lakshmi’s tea stall on Hyderabad’s
A ₹2 sachet of betel nuts or a ₹10 cup of piping-hot tea can be paid for digitally at Pujari Lakshmi’s tea stall on Hyderabad’s busy and upscale Jubilee Hills Road No. 10. A UPI QR code is prominently displayed at her stall, but Ms. Pujari herself does not know how to use it. She keeps her broken smartphone on a stand next to the gas stove, its screen held in place by two rubber bands. A UPI app is installed on the phone, but when she has to make a digital payment, it is her husband, Pujari Srinivas, or her children who handle the transaction using her UPI ID. “Who doesn’t have a bank account and a smartphone these days? But I don’t know how to use UPI apps. What if the money goes to the wrong account,” she asks in Telugu, as she pours tea for her customers. Pujari is among thousands of women from low-income households and the informal sector for whom access to a smartphone does not necessarily translate to access to India’s digital payments revolution.
A new study by Hyderabad-based NGO Yugantar has found that women’s adoption of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is shaped as much by trust, confidence, social norms and control over finances as by access to technology. The study, published in CSI Transactions on ICT by Springer Nature, examines Yugantar’s Digital Budget Rani programme, which worked with 40,552 women across 13 districts in Telangana and two in Andhra Pradesh between 2023 and 2025 across urban, semi-urban and rural districts through partnerships with the Telangana Domestic Workers’ Union, the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation, the Mission for the Elimination of Rural Poverty and the Society for the Elimination of Rural Poverty. The research draws on qualitative and quantitative data collected during programme implementation, and also identifies three broad trajectories in women’s relationship with UPI. The first comprises users, who tend to be younger women with higher levels of education and greater access to technology. The other two groups are women who do not use UPI, but for very different reasons. Some non-users face structural and social barriers that prevent them from adopting digital financial services.
Others actively reject UPI because of concerns around financial control strategies and distrust. The distinction is important, the study notes, because non-use cannot simply be understood as a lack of access or digital literacy. The findings suggest that putting a smartphone or digital payment system within reach of women is not, by itself, enough to ensure adoption. Women’s engagement with UPI is also influenced by their confidence in using technology, their ability to make financial decisions, social norms and the support available to them within their communities. The scale of the intervention comes against the backdrop of the rapid expansion of UPI which accounted for around 70% of total digital payments in India in 2023-24, compared with 17% in 2018-19. According to a statement issued by the Ministry of Finance on March 11, 2025, total digital payment transactions grow by 46% from ₹8,839 crore in 2021-22 to ₹18,737 crore in 2023-24. Yet, the researchers found that the benefits of this expansion were not experienced equally by women from marginalised communities. In fact, several international leaders have experienced UPI during their visits to India, including French President Emmanuel Macron and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.
The programme introduced women to two forms of UPI payments: smartphone-based applications and 123PAY, an interactive voice response (IVR)-based system. The latter became particularly significant for women who found app-based payments difficult. The experience showed that technology designed around users’ circumstances can make a difference. The programme’s wider experience also showed that the digital divide was not simply a question of whether women possessed phones. Earlier, Budget Rani work had found that while 70% of women had bank accounts and nearly all had their own mobile phones, fewer than 10% made digital payment transfers. The study caution that the findings concern women’s onboarding process and should not be interpreted as evidence of their continued use of UPI over time. The study, therefore, examines the crucial first step into digital payments rather than the entire journey of becoming a regular digital-payment user.
The BriefWire