Govt-Backed UPI Ends 2018 With A Record 620 Mn Transactions In December

The government’s digital payments system, Unified Payments Interface (UPI), announced a blockbuster ending to 2018, recording more than 620 Mn transactions in December. This took the total number of digital payment transactions on the UPI platform in the year to 3 Bn.

According to the latest data shared by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the value of these transactions was INR 1.02 Lakh Cr ($14.73 Bn) against 524.94 Mn transactions worth INR 82,232.21 Cr ($11.78 Bn) in November 2018.

The number of UPI transactions in December increased 18% from November, which was the first month that UPI recorded more than half a billion transactions since its launch in 2016.

Over the year, UPI’s retail payment mode attracted global majors such as Amazon and WhatsApp and domestic players such as Paytm and PhonePe, who adopted the settlement system.

Here’s a look at some of the major steps taken by the NPCI for UPI promotion in 2018:

• The NPCI launched Version 2.0 of UPI in July 2018, which included additional features such as generating collect payment requests along with invoice/ bill attachment, a one-time mandate with block functionality, signed intent/quick response code and others.
• The NPCI announced that transactions in which the payer and payee accounts are the same would be blocked from August 1 2018.
• The payments body also planned to enable UPI-based payments for inward international transactions.

The digital payments industry in India has been on an all-time high. Credit Suisse expects India’s digital payments industry, which is currently worth around $200 Bn, to grow five-fold to reach $1 Tn by 2023.

Companies are increasingly adopting UPI transactions for their day-to-day finances. Large players in the space include Paytm, PhonePe, Google Pay, etc, with WhatsApp trying its best to enable its own payments service as well.