Investment is needed for UPI to grow 10X and reach three billion transactions a day: NPCI’s Dilip Asbe

Dilip Asbe said that growing UPI transactions to 3 bn a day needs investments from both customer and merchant sides.

To sustain and feed the massive growth of transactions in Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which is expected to touch a 10X growth of three billion transactions a day, more investments are needed both on the customer and the merchant side, said National Payments Council of India’s Chief Executive officer Dilip Asbe.

“Growing to 10X or 3 billion translations per day is the true potential of India and to reach there we need money and we need investments both on the customer and merchant side,” Asbe said while addressing a session at News18’s Rising India Summit on Wednesday.

“In the next two-three years we are hoping to touch a billion transactions a day and as of today we are at around 30 crore transactions a day operated by Indians…There are 600 million eligible customers who are outside the digital payments ecosystem. And there are 100 million merchants outside the digital payment ecosystem who needs to come in and I think we will need money,” he added.

As of date, the government is giving digital payment incentives to the ecosystem. “There is a dialogue within the ecosystem with the government and the stakeholders that how do we grow UPI to 10X and how do we ensure that onboarding of a large number of customers and merchants is smooth with the right investment,” he said.

This comes at a time when the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) on Wednesday has recommended an interchange fee on Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions made through Prepaid Payment Instruments (PPI Wallets).

However there is no fee chargeable from the customer side.

Globalisation of UPI

On February 21, 2023, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Singapore counterpart Lee Hsien Loong launched the linkage of cross-border connectivity between the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) of India and PayNow of Singapore.

Asbe said that in the next 10-20 years time the long vision is to be self sufficient on the cross-border pipes as well.

“It is a time-consuming process but the beginning has been made with the Singapore-India corridor. In 30 seconds one country’s bank account can be credited and the other country’s bank account. This has given the confidence to the world on UPI,” he said.

In the next five years we will see at least a few countries will utilise India’s payment stack, Asbe said.

“Having the cross-border pipes, I expect at least atleast 15 top countries out of 30 will have self-sufficient cross-border pipes to process remittances and payments,” he added.

India’s UPI system is steadily becoming attractive globally. The facility is seeing international extension to inbound foreign travelers from G20 countries for making merchant payments and non-resident Indians (NRIs) in selected international countries.

Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on February 13 said that India has signed memoranda of understanding (MoUs) with 13 countries that want to adopt the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) for their digital payments.