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Emphasizing the rapid growth of digital payments in India, Sitharaman said UPI transactions have increased nearly 13,000-fold since 2016–17. The platform now handles more than 2,400 crore transactions a month, reflecting how widely digital payments have become part of everyday life.
She said the fintech ecosystem built around UPI and other digital initiatives was also helping more people access financial services, including credit, insurance and investment products, many of them for the first time.
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Turning to the infrastructure needed to support India's growing digital economy, Sitharaman described data centres as the "vault of the digital age".
She pointed out that the government had granted infrastructure status to data centres in 2022. The Union Budget 2026–27 also announced a tax holiday for foreign companies offering global cloud services through data centres located in India.
Sitharaman said the Reserve Bank's new campus would further strengthen India's capacity to manage critical financial systems within the country.
The campus will house key payment infrastructure, including the Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) and National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) systems, both of which play a central role in banking transactions.
It will also have a training institute and a dedicated research wing focused on developing expertise in cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and data centres.