The book chronicles India’s rise as a digital payment superpower and UPI’s origin story
Bengaluru, September 26, 2026: Honorable Finance Minister Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman today 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, Cashless Nation tells the inside story of India’s digital-payments transformation and the conception, creation and extraordinary rise of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). The unveiling took place 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 tenth anniversary, Cashless Nation chronicles a multi-decade national journey: how India built a digital-payments infrastructure of unprecedented scale, changed everyday relationships with money, and emerged as a global reference point for interoperable, real-time payments.
With lucid, fast-paced storytelling, the book brings to life the people, institutions, bold ideas, policy choices and often-unseen execution that made this transformation possible. It traces the evolution of India’s payments ecosystem, from its early institutional foundations to UPI’s breakthrough design, and explores how public digital infrastructure came to serve citizens at extraordinary 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.”
The authors bring complementary perspectives to the narrative. Dr. Santanu Paul, a technologist and entrepreneur, and B. Sambamurthy, a veteran banker and former senior financial-sector leader, had close professional exposure to the developments that shaped India’s payments landscape. Their engagement with institutions including NPCI and IDRBT, together with board and wider financial-sector experience, brings technological, institutional and banking insight to this account of the UPI story.
More information about Cashless Nation: How UPI Changed Everything is available at cashlessnationbook.com.
