UPI App BHIM Records 16.3 Mn Transactions In June 2018

The NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India) has witnessed an increase in the number of transactions done through the government-owned UPI app — BHIM (Bharat Interface for Money). The number of transactions increased from 14.2 Mn in May to 16.3 Mn in the month of June, a 15% rise.

At the same time, the value of transactions was recorded to be INR 6,261 Cr ($911.84 Mn), as compared to INR 5,748.5 Cr ($837.2 Mn) last month, a 9% increase.

Inc42 had earlier reported that UPI saw 30% growth leading to 246.34 Mn transactions worth $5.95 Bn (INR 40.8K Cr) in the month of June.

At present, the BHIM App is being used by 92 banks in India and has witnessed an increase in the number of application downloads.

Govt Pushes BHIM App To Take On Private Players

With private players such as Google Tez, WhatsApp Pay, Amazon Pay, PhonePe, and Paytm, among others, moving aggressively in the digital payments space riding the UPI bandwagon, the Centre has also started pushing the boundaries for the BHIM app.

Recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had asked all the central ministers, departments, states and union territories to set and achieve targets for digital transactions through BHIM app.

Further, he had also asked the railway ministry and the ministry of consumer affairs, food, and public distribution, which handle big payment volumes, to make efforts to boost usage of BHIM app.

In the month of April, it was announced that the government will commit nearly $137.93 Mn in cashback and incentives to merchants to increase adoption of the BHIM app. The government has planned to raise merchant incentive to 0.5% of the transaction value upto $153.24 (INR 10K) against the earlier 0.25% of the transaction value of just $30.64 (INR 2K).

A report by Credit Suisse predicted that India’s digital payments industry, which is currently worth around $200 Bn, is expected to grow five-fold to reach $1 Tn by 2023. Meanwhile, digital spending by consumers is expected to grow nearly 2.5 times to $100 Bn by 2020, according to a Google-BCG report.

[The development was reported by LiveMint.]