UPI transactions top 900 million in August

MUMBAI: Transactions made through Unified Payments Interface (UPI) have, for the first time, crossed the 900 million mark in August, led by an increase in merchant adoption of the payment channel and improved smartphone penetration in certain states.

Newly released data from National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) show that in August, a total of 918 million transactions worth Rs 1.54 lakh crore were processed on the interoperable digital payments channel; an 11.6% surge in volumes and 5.5% in value from the month of July, when 822 million transactions worth Rs 1.46 lakh crore were made.

“The numbers have been driven by the consistent core growth in the last few months,” said Praveena Rai, COO, NPCI. “We have seen good adoption across the board in both large and small cities.”

In the festive season from September to December, 1 billion transactions a month may not be too far away. UPI was first introduced in August 2016, just before demonetisation, with 21 banks live on the platform. Since then, over 120 banks have gone live on the platform allowing real time interoperable transactions for both consumers and merchants. Subsequently, various states based on different factors such as internet and smartphone penetration, wealth generation and literacy rates have seen different levels of adoption. Data sourced by ET from government database on digital payments Digidhan show that Andhra Pradesh is the leading adopter of the payment mode, with 17 transactions per person since April 2019, followed by Haryana with a rate of 9 in this period.

On the other hand, people in Chhattisgarh are using the payment channel the least, at around 0.08 transactions per person.

Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Odisha made for the other three states with the highest transaction hit rates, whereas the bottom five states were Chhattisgarh, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Tripura and Jammu and Kashmir - all with less than 1 transaction per person.

For Maharashtra, 3.6 transactions were made per person while for Karnataka it was 4.9. Meanwhile, National Capital Delhi saw 5.4 transactions per person being made in this period.

“The adoption rates are closely related to smartphone penetration and literacy. States such as Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, with high infrastructure investments, have seen a lot of people making payments digitally,” said Harshil Mathur, CEO, Razorpay, a leading payment gateway.