Unified Payments Interface (UPI), a real-time payment system facilitating inter-bank transactions developed by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), has reported 312 million transactions in August 2018.
UPI transactions have registered a significant growth of 32% from the previous month when it registered around 235.6 million transactions.
It is also worth noting that the boost in the numbers comes after the NPCI stopped the transactions with debit and credit to the same bank account from 1st August.
UPI transactions have grown tremendously since it was launched two years ago by Dr Raghuram Rajan, former governor of the RBI. In August 2017, the number of transactions for the month stood at around 16 million and valued at ₹4,127 crores. The current transactions stand at 312 million and valued at over ₹54,000 crores, showing the significant growth and adoption of UPI in the country.
The average UPI transaction size in August is ₹1,800, similar to that in the previous month.
“Foundation of peer-to-peer payments in UPI has helped. Now, the effort will be to expand in the person-to-merchant space,” said Dilip Asbe, Chief Executive Officer of NPCI, in a previous interaction. “We hope to cross 100 million users on UPI over the next two years.”
Last month, NPCI also launched UPI 2.0, including new features for the users. The new features that were included in the UPI 2.0 included overdraft facility, one-time mandate, invoice in the inbox, and signed intent and QR. The new features provide increased security and flexibility for users.
For the month of July, Flipkart owned digital payment platform PhonePe had claimed to have 40% of the market share of the overall UPI transactions, leaving behind India’s digital payments giant Paytm.
As many more Indian users come online, the number of UPI transactions is set to increase further. It is already making the preferred payment mode for small transactions for many users in the country.