UPSC CIVIL SERVICES PRELIMINARY EXAMINATION

UPSC Prelims 2026— Question 90

2026General Studies Paper-IEconomyMoney & BankingDigital Paymentsdifficult
Q90

Question

10. Which one of the following statements about Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and Central Bank Digital Currency (Digital Rupee) is not correct ? =

Options

A
UPI is a real-time payment system but Digital Rupee is akin to sovereign paper currency.
B
In case of UPI, settlement for end users happens instantly as the money gets immediately debited or credited but in case of Digital Rupee, there is no settlement as the wallet balance gets transferred to another wallet.
C
UPI transactions are recorded by banks and reflected in bank statements but in case of Digital Rupee, no data is captured in bank statements as transactions are from one wallet to another.
D
In both the cases (UPI and Digital Rupee), the liability lies with the users and their respective banks.✓ Correct Answer
AnswerOption D

Explanation

This question tests upi and digital rupee within Digital Currency. It is framed as a UPSC Prelims multiple statements question, so the important task is to identify the governing fact or relationship and then test every alternative against it. The keyed answer is Option D: In both the cases (UPI and Digital Rupee), the liability lies with the users and their respective banks.. The question wording should be read literally. In particular, the terms and qualifiers used in the stem determine what must be true; nearby concepts that look plausible should not be substituted for the concept actually asked. For revision, the decisive distinction is therefore the one captured by the keyed alternative rather than the superficial familiarity of any single option. This is especially important in statement-combination questions, where one incorrect component makes an entire combination incorrect. Option A is not the keyed answer. Its weakness lies in failing to satisfy the complete condition tested by the stem: it either selects an incorrect statement, omits a statement that must be included, includes an additional incorrect statement, or assigns the wrong institutional/factual relationship. Thus it should be rejected after checking the underlying rule rather than by guessing from the option pattern. Option B is not the keyed answer. Its weakness lies in failing to satisfy the complete condition tested by the stem: it either selects an incorrect statement, omits a statement that must be included, includes an additional incorrect statement, or assigns the wrong institutional/factual relationship. Thus it should be rejected after checking the underlying rule rather than by guessing from the option pattern. Option C is not the keyed answer. Its weakness lies in failing to satisfy the complete condition tested by the stem: it either selects an incorrect statement, omits a statement that must be included, includes an additional incorrect statement, or assigns the wrong institutional/factual relationship. Thus it should be rejected after checking the underlying rule rather than by guessing from the option pattern. Option D is correct because it is the alternative that satisfies the complete condition set in the question. It should be retained as the final answer only after the underlying statements, institutional relationship, chronology, location, definition, or factual identification has been checked individually. For exam preparation, the useful takeaway is to remember the underlying digital currency concept and the specific upi and digital rupee distinction, not merely the option letter. This question also illustrates why elimination should be evidence-based: first identify what each statement asserts, then verify it independently, and only after that map the surviving statements to the code. The database classification is intended to make the same PYQ searchable by year, subject, topic and subtopic for later online practice.

Question Classification

SubjectEconomy
TopicMoney & Banking
SubtopicDigital Payments
Question TypeMultiple Statements
Difficultydifficult
VerificationVerified