UPI transactions in July-Sep up 183% at 2.7 bn; value jumps to Rs 4.6 trn

The number of transactions done on mobile wallets was 1.04 billion, an increase of just 5 per cent over previous year period while the value of transactions in the July-September period was Rs 466 bn

The total volume of Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions in Q3 2019 touched 2.7 billion, a whopping 183 per cent increase from the same July-September quarter a year ago. In terms of value, UPI clocked Rs 4.6 trillion, up 189 per cent from Q3 2018, a new report said on Wednesday.

The number of transactions done on mobile wallets was 1.04 billion, an increase of just 5 per cent over previous year period while the value of transactions in the July-September period was Rs 466 billion, an increase of 2 per cent over Q3 of the previous year, said the Worldline report tiled "India Digital Payments Report - Q3 2019".

"The growth of mobile wallets has not taken off much following the emergence of UPI. The transactions done using mobile wallets in Q3 2019 are only 10 per cent of the size of the total transaction value on the UPI platform," the report noted.

Starting with just 21 member banks and less than 1 million transactions in August 2016, UPI is now adopted by 141 banks and achieved a milestone transaction volume of 1 billion in October this year.

"The Reserve Bank of India, in its efforts to promote digital payments recently notified that it will operationalize the Acceptance Development Fund

from January 1, 2020. This will clearly expedite the task of enabling Tier III, IV markets with acceptance infrastructure," said Deepak Chandnani Managing Director, Worldline South Asia & Middle East.

"Though POS terminals are increasing at a steady pace and have reached 4.59 million till September 2019, we still have a long way to go to cater close to 900 million cards in circulation," he added.

In Q3 2019, the total number of credit card transactions was 540 million, an increase of 25.6 per cent over the previous year and the total number of debit card transactions was 3.7 billion, an increase of 6.4 per cent over the previous year.

The average ticket size on POS terminals for credit card transactions was Rs 3,324 and Rs 1,357 for debit card transactions.

IMPS continued its strong growth in Q3 2019. IMPS recorded 594 million transactions, a 50 per cent increase from Q3 2018 and in terms of value, IMPS clocked Rs 5.5 trillion, up 51 per cent from Q3 2018.

August was the month with the highest number of transactions. The highest number of transactions was recorded on August 10, just two days before Eid-al-Adha.

The trend of highest number of transactions recorded during festivals continued like previous quarters.

Worldline said it has over 1 million merchant touchpoints pan-India, accounting for 30 per cent of the merchant acquiring touchpoints.