UPI Records 731 Cr Txn Worth INR 12.11 Lakh Cr In October 2022

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) which governs India’s real-time payment phenomenon UPI recorded 731 Cr transactions in October 2022 – a 7.8% month-on-month (MoM) growth from September 2022 when it registered 678 Cr transactions. 

The transaction value has also increased by 8.52% MoM from INR 11.16 Lakh Cr to INR 12.11 Lakh Cr ($146.48 Bn). On average, the per value of the transaction was INR 1657.43.

With this, the total transaction value of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) in 2022 was INR 101.22 Lakh Cr ($1.22 Tn).

The numbers come at the heels of the Indian government’s plans to have 1 Bn transactions a day, as opposed to the current 176.42 Mn daily transactions.

The NPCI is also mulling over a limit on the number of free transactions that a user can do via UPI. 

The high transacting categories for UPI included groceries, dining out, pharmacies, mobile recharges and digital games.

Since a large number of these transactions are small in value, banks have claimed significant resource wastage and asked users to follow the small-value offline UPI transactions model. Canara Bank and Indian Overseas Bank have already set limits on the number of UPI withdrawals.

An IIT Bombay research student Ashish Das recently conducted the research and submitted a paper to the RBI amid the central bank’s plans for fees on UPI. His research supported the move to digital currency, enabling a lowered cost of rupee printing, setting it off with UPI’s cost.

The Reserve Bank of India is already commencing a pilot of the digital rupee in India for the wholesale segment today (November 1, 2022). These sovereign currencies will be issued by the central bank and can be used as a medium of payment, legal tender, and a safe store of value by all citizens, enterprises, and government agencies. 

Currently, the wholesale usage of digital currency entails interbank transfers and other related wholesale transactions while retail usage would mean private sector usage.

It will also be freely convertible against commercial bank money and cash. The effect of the digital currency on UPI is still unknown.