Growth Of UPI Falls To 19% For October 2018

In line with growing internet penetration and adoption across the country, the Indian government’s flagship Unified Payments Interface (UPI) continued a steep growth for the month of October recording 482.36 Mn transactions, an increase of 19% from 405.87 Mn transactions in September 2018.

UPI recorded 32% growth in August with 312 Mn transactions for a value of $7.41 Bn (INR 54,212 Cr) against 235.6 Mn transactions in July 2018.

At the same time, the value of transactions has increased by 25% as UPI recorded transactions value of $10.16 Bn (INR 74,948.27 Cr) in October, against $8.11 Bn (INR 59,835.26 Cr). Prior to this, the growth in transactions was 10% for the month of September.

National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) had launched version 2.0 in July 2018 which included an additional feature 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.

Also, it is important to note here that August and September results were supposed to be the real test for the NPCI’s UPI mandate as the organisation had decided that transactions in which the payer and payee accounts are the same will be blocked from August 1.

Notably, NPCI also planned to enable UPI-based payments for inward international transactions.

With a host of new features, UPI 2.0 has a lot to offer consumers and merchants. In the market major players for the digital payments continue to be Paytm, PhonePe, Google Pay(previously Tez) etc, with WhatsApp Pay stuck in regulatory hurdles.