SUMMARY
The move is aimed at encouraging genuine transactions in the UPI ecosystem
However, there are no restrictions on person-to-merchant (P2M) transactions, says the NPCI CEO
The restriction has been in effect since October 21
The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has reduced the maximum number of P2P (peer-to-peer) transactions to 10 per bank from 20 previously, with an aims to encourage genuine transactions in the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) ecosystem and bring in rationality in the space.
The move by NPCI comes less than a week after the RBI released operational guidelines to enable interoperability between mobile wallets and between bank accounts and e-wallets through the UPI system.
The NPCI, which manages the instant payment railroad, issued a circular limiting the number of daily UPI transactions to 10 transactions per bank account for the P2P segment within a span of 24 hours, where the timestamp of the first transaction is considered as the start time. The restriction has been in effect since October 21, 2018.
“This limit is inclusive only for P2P transactions originating from a unique bank account,” said in the notice that was issued on October 22. However, there is no restrictions for person-to-merchant (P2M) transactions.
“Now that UPI is two years old and real traffic is driving growth, we believe 10 transactions per day should be good enough for P2P. There are no restrictions for P2M transactions,” ET cited NPCI chief executive officer Dilip Asbe as saying.
UPI recorded 405.87 Mn transactions in September this year for a value of $8.18 Bn (INR 59,835 Cr), as against 312 Mn transactions for a value of $7.41 Bn (INR 54,212 Cr) in August, 235.6 Mn in July, and 246 Mn in June, this year.
The UPI space is seeing huge competition between rival payment companies in the country. In the last month’s UPI transaction count, of which One97 Communications-owned digital payments brand Paytm contributed 33% with 137 Mn transactions.
In July, however, PhonePe claimed the top spot in the number of UPI transactions. PhonePe in a blog post reported that it processed more than 13.6 Mn (INR 100 Cr) in a single day with over 50 transactions per second at its peak during Flipkart’s Big Billion Day (BBD) sales festival.
