New Delhi, Aug. 12 -- It was not ingenuity as much as gumption that gave India a global headstart on payments done via handsets. While the West dithered on digital identities over qualms of privacy, we went ahead with the biometric database of Aadhaar, linking it securely with bank accounts and phones to create such marvels as the Unified Payments Interface (UPI).

In the end, outcomes matter. Bank transfers by UPI are not just convenient, they have grown ubiquitous enough to offer useful snapshots of the money flowing around through this platform.

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Take last month's data from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which runs UPI. By usage volume, it ...