Demonetisation at 10: Cash in Circulation Up 143%, UPI Hits 24 Billion

Ten years after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced on 8 November 2016 that Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes would stop being legal tender, cash in circulation is about 143% higher than it was that evening, and UPI now processes more than 24 billion payments a month. Business Standard, citing RBI, NPCI and finance ministry data, reported on 5 November that currency in circulation stood at Rs 43.16 trillion in the week to 23 October 2026, against Rs 17.77 trillion on the night of the ban.

Cash Is Back, but So Are Digital Payments

For a shopkeeper or a vegetable seller, the shift is visible at the counter. UPI recorded 24.07 billion transactions worth Rs 29.37 trillion in September 2026, and 86% of person-to-merchant UPI payments in 2025-26 were below Rs 500, according to the data Business Standard cited. Yet households still hold cash: the currency-to-GDP ratio is about 12%, almost where it was in 2015-16 (12.1%).

99.3% of Banned Notes Came Back

The note ban withdrew notes worth Rs 15.42 lakh crore, roughly 87% of currency by value. The RBI reported in its 2017-18 annual report that 99.3% of them returned to banks, which undercut the argument that large amounts of unaccounted cash would simply be left unexchanged. The government had listed black money, counterfeit notes, terror financing and a wider tax net among its aims. The currency-to-GDP ratio fell to 8.7% in 2016-17, rose to 14.4% in 2020-21, and is now near 12%.

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UPI, launched in April 2016, handled about 17.8 million transactions in 2016-17. In 2025-26 the figure was 241.62 billion transactions worth about Rs 314 trillion, and 756 banks are live on the system, up from 21 at launch.

Questions That Remain Open

Opposition leaders have used the anniversary in earlier years to call the ban a blunder, and Telangana government adviser Mohammed Ali Shabbir demanded on 8 November that the Centre publish a full impact assessment. A financial expert, S Adikesavan, told Onmanorama the ban caused considerable hardship in its first phase, though he saw it as a reform attempt whose execution failed. The government has not issued a new assessment for the anniversary, and no official estimate of the black money recovered has been published in the reports reviewed. RBI’s weekly currency data, released every Friday, will show whether cash growth, now 13.7% a year, keeps outpacing the 11.9% recorded in 2025-26. The latest RBI figures are tracked on the RBI tag page.

Source: Based on reporting by Business Standard, Onmanorama, Business Today and Indian Opinion.

Image: Shutterstock.