UPI Transactions Fall By 6% In May, But Value Goes Up To INR 152K Cr

Indian government-backed real-time payment system Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has clocked in 733.54 Mn transactions in May 2019. That’s a 6.17% decline from the total number of transactions last month when UPI recorded 781.79 Mn transactions.

According to the data released by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) today (June 1), while the number of transactions has reduced, the transaction value has increased from $20.42 Bn (INR 1,42,034.39 Cr) in April to $21.91 Bn (INR 1,52,449.29 Cr) in May 2019.

Other important online transaction statistics released by the NPCI are:

1. Inter-bank electronic funds transfer system (IMPS) recorded 183.33 Mn transactions worth INR 1,80,456.44 Cr
2. Aadhar-enabled Point of Sale (AePS) recorded 192.11 Mn transactions worth INR 9,228.59 Cr
3. National Electronic Toll Collection (NETC) clocked in 27.52 Mn transactions worth INR 616.40 Cr

The NPCI had launched UPI platform in 2016, which let individuals and businesses set up a virtual payment address for quick and seamless transfers. Users and businesses can send collect requests which are fulfilled by the users by just entering a unique PIN.

UPI received a massive boost after the government announced demonetisation in November 2016 and removed INR 1,000 and INR 500 currency notes from circulation.

India’s monthly digital transactions volume had increased three times to 2.44 Bn in November 2018 from 736.7 Mn transactions in October 2016.

In a bid to boost the growth. last year, NPCI launched an updated version dubbed as UPI 2.0 which included additional features 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.

According to NITI Aayog’s ”Digital Payments (2018 edition)”, India’s digital payments industry is estimated to grow to $1 Tn by 2023. It also suggested that the value of digital payments will likely jump from the current 10% to over 25% by 2023.

Most recently, Paytm said that it processes more than 400 Mn monthly transactions on its gateway business for its merchants.

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