Payment done through UPI gaining traction; records 20% jump in March

Transactions done through the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) have seen a massive jump, in what would be a boost to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s push towards digital payment, according to an Economic Times.

The UPI app recorded a 20 percent jump in transaction reaching Rs 2,000 crore in March against Rs 1,660 crore transaction done in the month of January, the report said quoting RBI data.

According to AP Hota, managing director National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI), BHIM (Bharat Interface for Money) is seeing about 80,000 transactions daily and registering nearly 2 lakh transactions on the entire UPI railroad.

At present, 44 banks are on UPI while 35 banks have developed their own applications for UPI, which are available on Google Play Store for download.

The government promoted BHIM and non-bank payments apps such as PhonePe and Trupay drives majority of transactions.

Most of the UPI transactions are done through peer-to-peer modes for payments and remittances. It is expected that the share of merchant transactions will go up with the rollout of BharatQR on a full scale.

BharatQR is a common QR code used by all card payment companies to allow digital payment without swiping cards at the point-of-sale (PoS) machines.

Meanwhile, payments done through mobile wallets have gone down Rs 1,800 crore in March compared to Rs 2,100 crore worth of transaction done in January, according to RBI data.

The average wallet transaction size for wallets too is far lower: Rs 250 compared to Rs 4,000 for UPI.