Another milestone for India's UPI transactions

In a significant milestone in India’s payments story, the centre’s contactless digital payments framework, Unified Payments Interface (UPI), crossed 10 billion monthly transactions in August, confirmed the Reserve Bank’s non-profit agency, National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).

 

 

While the official transaction figures are yet to be released by the National Payments Council of India (NPCI), the umbrella body for UPI, the latest data released as of August 29, 2023 shows that volumes had crossed 9.88 billion by then.

 

 

In a tweet, the body confirmed that payments made on UPI crossed this feat on Wednesday.UPI crossed 1 billion monthly transactions for the first time in October 2019, thus taking less than four years to grow 4x in its adoption.

 

 

Transactions on UPI have grown by over 50% year-on-year, with August last year registering 6.58 billion monthly transactions. The payments network neared the 10 billion mark in July itself, registering 9.96 billion transactions last month—after the month of June saw a marginal sequential drop from May.

 

 

 

Confirmation of total transaction volume and value for the month of August was yet to be updated by NPCI until press time. Industry stakeholders said that the payments framework has further room for growth.

 

Sunil Rongala, senior vice-president and head of strategy for India at payments services firm Worldwide said, “At 10 billion, there is still a lot of room for UPI transactions to grow. The data shows that UPI’s peer to merchant (P2M) transactions are growing at a pace of over 100% YoY, and have a higher share than peer to peer (P2P) transactions. Over time, P2M transactions will drive UPI transactions growth, and it will be no surprise if monthly UPI transactions hit 20 billion in the next 18-24 months."

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