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India’s digital payments narrative is now taking on a gendered perspective with the “UPI For Her” initiative—a move to on-board 200 million women into the digital economy. Introduced by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and Women's World Banking (WWB), the programme seeks to address some of the major hurdles that deter women from embracing the Unified Payments Interface ( UPI ), which is now considered India’s most popular real-time payment system. Even though the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana has ensured that 55.
6 per cent of bank accounts at the basic level are owned by women, only 25 per cent of UPI users are women. This gap is even wider in the rural and semi-urban locations. Though the usage of smartphones and mobile Internet by women has risen—30 per cent in 2022 versus 37 per cent in 2023—their usage of digital finance continues to be low.
WWB’s study in the initiative quantifies two leading segments with the highest possible adoption rate for UPI as the “Cautious Balancer” and the “Fence Sitter”. Fence Sitters represent women who are quite familiar with digital payments, but are reluctant to fully embrace the digital financial ecosystem due to inertia and lack of awareness about its benefits. Cautious Balancers, on the other hand, generally employ smartphones for phone calls or entertainment purposes, but do not favour using UPI, fearing they might lose control over their savings.
Fence Sitters are more digitally educated and operate small ventures, but seldom execute transactions through UPI, mostly preferring to use cash. To address these problems, the initiative experimented with two targeted interventions. These are: 1] Prepaid Payment Instruments (PPIs) For Cautious Balancers: A pilot phase in Mathura, Uttar Pradesh, with Spice Money was launched.
Of the 178 women on-boarded over two months, 63 per cent turned into active users, making on average 10 transactions a month. Over 90 per cent of the participants said they felt confident using digital payments after being trained in person by trusted agents. The popularity of PPIs is in separating them from savings accounts, providing women with control and perceived security.
2] UPI Merchant Tools For Women Micro-Entrepreneurs: A second phase was conducted in Ayodhya and Bhandara districts using MobiKwik and PhonePe. More than 2,500 women entrepreneurs were contacted, and 18 per cent were on-boarded successfully as UPI merchants. Out of the on-boarded ones, 49 per cent turned out to be active users, with more than two transactions a month of over Rs 100.
The women felt more confident when aided by female community agents, and several liked the potential of UPI to scale up their businesses. But there are still challenges. Approximately 57 per cent of women surveyed didn’t know that there were special UPI tools for merchants.
Approximately 40 per cent indicated that nobody had ever approached them, and 7 per cent thought their businesses were too small to be eligible. Also, 15 per cent of on-boarded merchants indicated confusion regarding fees and settlement schedules, reflecting the need for more transparent communication. Beyond Payments: Building A Habit The project also considered how women would step up to using UPI for investments and savings.
Working in partnership with LXME—a women-led investment platform—the project observed that when women became comfortable using UPI, they were more open to making small investments. For instance, 52 per cent of users on LXME moved away from other payment channels to UPI as soon as the functionality came through. Programs such as 7-day savings challenges helped build habits.
To expand such initiatives, the report urged: With increasing smartphone penetration and increasing policy attention to women-led development, programs, such as ‘UPI For Her’, can contribute significantly to improved financial inclusion. As digital payments become an increasingly important vehicle for women switching from cash to a digital economy, it’s not only how transactions, but even livelihoods, freedom, and opportunity will transform..
