5 ms·

22B transactions a year mean an average of ~700 QPS for the NPCI switch. Of course the traffic is not uniform, it probably peaks at many times that number, but

22B transactions a year mean an average of ~700 QPS for the NPCI switch. Of course the traffic is not uniform, it probably peaks at many times that number, but that still doesn't sound that bad - for comparison, a quick Google tells me Nasdaq TotalView ITCH feed peaks at 100k+ QPS at market open.

repeek 2mo ago
22B in the month of June 2026, so 264B extrapolated annually.
- thehamkercat 2mo ago
  ~8.8K TPS on average
- vinay_ys 2mo ago
  Yep. Here's the accurate Month-to-date stats published daily by the network operator NPCI https://x.com/NPCI_NPCI https://x.com/NPCI_NPCI. If you want official stats across all banks, across all payment rails, look at the central bank (RBI)'s website. They put out a lot of useful stats here https://www.rbi.org.in/Scripts/Statistics.aspx https://www.rbi.org.in/Scripts/Statistics.aspx Daily payment settlement stats here: https://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/content/docs/PSDDP04062020.xlsx https://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/content/docs/PSDDP04062020....
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
arter45 2mo ago
A great lesson for system design job interviews - if this is a popular payment system in a country with 1.5 billion people, your theoretical system you're designing for a small company cargo culting Google interviews will not likely support millions or even tens of thousands of average TPS.
- inigyou 2mo ago
  Well, they are money-moving transactions which means each person only does them a few times per day. If your system's transactions are more like showing the weather on the home screen, it's plausible you could have orders of magnitude more traffic than a payment system.
- AugustoCAS 2mo ago
  To add - I agree that payments is great question for systems designs. Merchants need to receive the money and being able to transact with it. Imagine the merchant receiving the payment is something like Amazon or Ebay (sorry, I don't know what similar large online retailers are in India). With the above, the problem becomes harder. Imagine receiving 2-3k TPS just on one account during a black Friday or similar day. Now your system has to perform fine for accounts that do 30 transactions an hour for a retail customer and 3k a second for a merchant.
vinay_ys 2mo ago
The right comparison for Nasdaq's order processing volume or messaging volume would be India's National Stock Exchange (NSE). It does more executed orders per day than nasdaq. I worked on scaling UPI a few years ago. Real-time Payments is vastly more complex as it is much more distributed - each transaction involves the two banks holding funds, two end-user apps (and their banks), and the network (npci) – for the payment to complete end to end, multiple message exchanges need to happen between these parties while the user at both ends are waiting. So, if you measure the scale in messages/sec it would 10-25x higher. Real-time payment rails that works 24/7 365 days a year from any bank to any bank (domestic, no exceptions) for free is truly a game-changer. Compare that to US payment rails which is slow and expensive. Apart from UPI, India has 3 more payment rails – NEFT (similar to ACH – batch settlement), IMPS (similar to UPI, instantaneous - but different user experience), RTGS (real-time, intermediated by the central bank RBI, but only for high-value transactions) – all are 24/7/365 and free. Then, there's credit card rails – apart from Visa and Mastercard, India also has RuPay which has much lower interchange rate.
- dj0k3r 2mo ago
  None of them are free, most banks now charge nominally (look at NEFT and IMPS charges). UPI itself is paid off by taxpayers. Also RTGS is the only ISO 20022 complaint payment rail (back when it wasn't globally very common) - something that needs to be appreciated more. People need to realise what NPCI offers is vastly different from what RBI offers. In my opinion what NPCI is offering will end up negatively impacting the general population in the long run.
  - crop_rotation 2mo ago
    Just for my curiosity, why do you think "what NPCI is offering will end up negatively impacting the general population in the long run."
    - tecoholic 2mo ago
      I would guess NPCI being a private body with transaction charges being borne by the Indian government is a net negative in the long run. It costs everyone. NEFT and RTGS on the other hand is RBI regulated with clear pricing and costs only those involved. The cost structure needs to change, but then, it won’t be possible. To pay 5 rupees for a chocolate with your phone and get even 0.5 added on top would make the consumers switch to cash almost immediately.

repeek 2mo ago

22B in the month of June 2026, so 264B extrapolated annually.

thehamkercat 2mo ago
~8.8K TPS on average
vinay_ys 2mo ago
Yep. Here's the accurate Month-to-date stats published daily by the network operator NPCI https://x.com/NPCI_NPCI https://x.com/NPCI_NPCI. If you want official stats across all banks, across all payment rails, look at the central bank (RBI)'s website. They put out a lot of useful stats here https://www.rbi.org.in/Scripts/Statistics.aspx https://www.rbi.org.in/Scripts/Statistics.aspx Daily payment settlement stats here: https://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/content/docs/PSDDP04062020.xlsx https://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/content/docs/PSDDP04062020....

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

arter45 2mo ago

A great lesson for system design job interviews - if this is a popular payment system in a country with 1.5 billion people, your theoretical system you're designing for a small company cargo culting Google interviews will not likely support millions or even tens of thousands of average TPS.

inigyou 2mo ago
Well, they are money-moving transactions which means each person only does them a few times per day. If your system's transactions are more like showing the weather on the home screen, it's plausible you could have orders of magnitude more traffic than a payment system.
AugustoCAS 2mo ago
To add - I agree that payments is great question for systems designs. Merchants need to receive the money and being able to transact with it. Imagine the merchant receiving the payment is something like Amazon or Ebay (sorry, I don't know what similar large online retailers are in India). With the above, the problem becomes harder. Imagine receiving 2-3k TPS just on one account during a black Friday or similar day. Now your system has to perform fine for accounts that do 30 transactions an hour for a retail customer and 3k a second for a merchant.

vinay_ys 2mo ago

The right comparison for Nasdaq's order processing volume or messaging volume would be India's National Stock Exchange (NSE). It does more executed orders per day than nasdaq. I worked on scaling UPI a few years ago. Real-time Payments is vastly more complex as it is much more distributed - each transaction involves the two banks holding funds, two end-user apps (and their banks), and the network (npci) – for the payment to complete end to end, multiple message exchanges need to happen between these parties while the user at both ends are waiting. So, if you measure the scale in messages/sec it would 10-25x higher. Real-time payment rails that works 24/7 365 days a year from any bank to any bank (domestic, no exceptions) for free is truly a game-changer. Compare that to US payment rails which is slow and expensive. Apart from UPI, India has 3 more payment rails – NEFT (similar to ACH – batch settlement), IMPS (similar to UPI, instantaneous - but different user experience), RTGS (real-time, intermediated by the central bank RBI, but only for high-value transactions) – all are 24/7/365 and free. Then, there's credit card rails – apart from Visa and Mastercard, India also has RuPay which has much lower interchange rate.

dj0k3r 2mo ago
None of them are free, most banks now charge nominally (look at NEFT and IMPS charges). UPI itself is paid off by taxpayers. Also RTGS is the only ISO 20022 complaint payment rail (back when it wasn't globally very common) - something that needs to be appreciated more. People need to realise what NPCI offers is vastly different from what RBI offers. In my opinion what NPCI is offering will end up negatively impacting the general population in the long run.
- crop_rotation 2mo ago
  Just for my curiosity, why do you think "what NPCI is offering will end up negatively impacting the general population in the long run."
  - tecoholic 2mo ago
    I would guess NPCI being a private body with transaction charges being borne by the Indian government is a net negative in the long run. It costs everyone. NEFT and RTGS on the other hand is RBI regulated with clear pricing and costs only those involved. The cost structure needs to change, but then, it won’t be possible. To pay 5 rupees for a chocolate with your phone and get even 0.5 added on top would make the consumers switch to cash almost immediately.