India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) clocked its highest-ever number of transactions at 8.7 billion in March 2023, according to National Payments Corporation of India’s (NPCI). Real-time payments jumped 60 per cent year-on-year (y-o-y) on the flagship online money transfer platform.
UPI hit 8 billion transactions for the first time in January this year. February saw a marginal decrease in the number of transactions – 7.5 billion – due to fewer days.
Ending the financial year on a high, the value of the record number of transactions was pegged at ₹14.05 trillion. UPI has registered a 46% y-o-y rise in value of transactions. March 2022 saw 5.4 billion payments worth ₹9.6 trillion. The value of digital transactions in January was ₹12.98 trillion, which dipped to ₹12.35 trillion in February.
Also read: NPCI says no charge on ‘normal’ UPI payments; but is free service sustainable?
UPI, an instant payment system developed by the NPCI which enables Person to Person (P2P) and Person to Merchant (P2M) transactions, has become the most popular and hassle-free mode of funds transfer in India. Although launched in 2016, UPI marked a billion transactions in a month in October 2019. Within 10 months, the platform recorded more than 3 billion monthly transactions.
UPI, which currently handles nearly 30 crore payments daily, has the potential to process one billion transactions every day, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Shaktikanta Das said recently.
The preference for UPI spiked during the pandemic, with 99% of transactions emerging from bank account–to–account payments. Now, RuPay credit cards can be connected to UPI and merchant payments can be made through prepaid instruments (PPIs), in a boost to digital transactions.
From April 1, NPCI imposed an interchange charge of up to 1.1 per cent on PPI transactions (gift cards, wallets, among others) over ₹2,000. Customers won’t be charged in normal UPI payments – account to bank account-based transfers.
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