UPI records 3.65 bn transactions worth Rs 6.54 trillion in September

The National Payments Corporation of India’s (NPCI) flagship payment platform, Unified Payments Interface (UPI), logged 3.65 billion transactions worth Rs 6.5 trillion in September, an all-time high, both in volume and value terms. It was also the third straight month with more than 3 billion transactions on the platform, signaling the wider digital payment adoption in the country since the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic hit.

On a month-on-month (MoM) basis, UPI’s volume of transactions was up 3 per cent, and the value of transactions was up 2.35 per cent. However, on a year-on-year basis, both volume and value of transactions have doubled, indicating the rapid pick up in retail digital payments over the last year or so.

In August, UPI logged 3.55 billion transactions worth Rs 6.39 trillion and in July it processed 3.24 billion transactions worth Rs 6.06 trillion.

UPI transactions may see further growth in October and November because of the festive season. Recently, NPCI’s CEO Dilip Asbe said that UPI transactions this year may touch 40-42 billion compared to 22 billion transactions last year. So far in the calendar year, UPI has processed 25.73 billion transactions, worth almost Rs 50 trillion.

Launched in 2016, UPI has seen tremendous adoption, further accelerated by the Covid-19 outbreak. It crossed 1 billion transactions for the first time in October 2019. The next 1 billion transactions came in under a year. In October 2020, UPI processed more than 2 billion transactions for the first time. Further, the journey from 2 billion transactions a month to 3 billion was traversed in 10 months, indicating the incredible popularity of UPI as a platform for retail digital payments among consumers.

Speaking at the global fintech fest, Asbe said, 'There is still a possibility of 10X growth in digital payments and we should process about 50 billion transactions on a monthly basis and 1 billion per day over the next three years."

He also said, "Going at this rate, we should achieve transactions worth $1 billion in the next five years but given the government and regulator’s push towards digital payments, it should be achieved in the next three years rather than five years."

As far as other digital payment platforms are concerned, Immediate Payments Service recorded 384.88 million transactions in September amounting to Rs 3.24 trillion. In August, it logged 377.94 million transactions worth Rs 3.18 trillion.

On the other hand, FASTag saw a slight dip in transactions in September after its record high transactions last month. In September, it recorded 193.6 million transactions worth Rs 3,000 crore, while in August it had recorded 201.2 million transactions worth Rs 3,076.56 crore.