UPI Touches All-Time High In December With 16.73 Bn Transactions

The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions reached a new high in December with 16.73 Bn transactions, marking an 8.08% increase from 15.48 Bn in the preceding month.

This also breached October’s 16.58 Bn transactions, which grew by 10% month-on-month (MoM).

In December, transactions saw a 0.9% increase from October’s 16.58 Bn.

According to National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) data, UPI transactions in December reached INR 23.25 Lakh Cr, a growth of 7.9% from INR 21.55 Lakh Cr in November.

Year-on-year (YoY), the volume of UPI transactions saw a significant increase of 39%.

The average daily transaction count rose to 540 Mn in December, up from 516 Mn in November.

This growth aligns with RBI governor Shaktikanta Das projecting that UPI transactions will soon hit the 1 Bn mark per day, up from the current 500 Mn.

In terms of UPI market share, fintech giants PhonePe and Google Pay continue to dominate the ecosystem, holding 48.4% and 37.3% market shares, respectively, as of August.

Besides, the government is actively promoting UPI on a global scale. In July, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced plans to integrate UPI with Malaysia’s national payments network, PayNet. Moreover, countries such as Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Bhutan, Nepal, the UAE, and Canada have already adopted India’s UPI payment model to varying degrees.

This comes months after the Reserve Bank of India increased the cap on transactions processed on UPI 123Pay to INR 10,000 from INR 5,000 earlier. Similarly, the per transaction limit for UPI Lite has also been raised to INR 1,000 from INR 500 earlier.

Introduced in 2022, UPI123Pay is designed for feature phone users. It allows them to access UPI services without an internet connection in 12 languages.