Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday unveiled Cashless Nation: How UPI Changed Everything, a new book by Dr. Santanu Paul and B. Sambamurthy, at Sangam 2026, the flagship annual conference of the IIT Madras Alumni Association and IIT Madras.
Published by Penguin Random House, the book explores the story of India’s digital payments transformation and the conception, development and rapid growth of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI).
The book was unveiled in the presence of Prof. V. Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras; Dr. Pramod Varma; Sankaran Naren; Ben Mathias; and Sharad Bulusu, among other distinguished guests.
Released in the year UPI marks its 10th anniversary, Cashless Nation traces the multi-decade journey behind India’s digital payments infrastructure. It examines how the country developed a large-scale digital payments system, changed everyday interactions with money and emerged as a global reference point for interoperable, real-time payments.
The book also highlights the people, institutions, ideas, policy decisions and execution efforts that contributed to the transformation. It follows the evolution of India’s payments ecosystem, from its early institutional foundations to UPI’s breakthrough design, while examining how public digital infrastructure came to serve citizens at a large scale.
Congratulating the authors, Prof. V. Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras, said: “Digital finance drives the economy and prosperity of modern nations. UPI has become a global role model for payments and is making an indelible mark in the economic growth of Bharat. Cashless Nation, by Santanu Paul, an IIT Madras alumnus, and B. Sambamurthy, is an invaluable book that narrates the behind-the-scenes story of UPI’s success.”
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