UPI closes August with 10.58 billion transactions, total value stands at Rs 15.76 lakh crore

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The mobile payments juggernaut, unified payments interface (UPI) crossed 10 billion transactions in a month for the first time on August 30. The volume stood at 10.58 billion by the end of the month, according to data from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which runs the real-time payments platform.

The value of transactions for August stood at Rs 15.76 lakh crore surpassing the previous record set in July of Rs 15.34 lakh crore.

The transaction volume growth stood at 61 percent on a year-on-year basis in August, while the transaction value grew 47 percent during the month.

Also read: UPI transactions for August crosses 10-billion mark for the first time

In July, the UPI platform had seen 9.96 billion transactions and the August figure represents a month-on-month growth of 5 percent.

During the month of August, UPI did an average of around 341 million transactions a day.

It was inevitable that the platform would cross the 10 billion milestone in August, given that it had already reached 9.89 billion in July and typically experiences slight month-on-month growth. This is despite the fact that both July and August have 31 days.

NPCI is targeting around 30 billion transactions a month or one billion transactions a day within the next two to three years.

During festive season months like in October and November, the platform sees outperformance compared to other months and this year could see UPI probably touching 12 billion transactions a month.

Fuelled by commerce

From what started as an inter-person money transfer system during the initial two-three years, UPI is increasingly driving commerce in the country, with around 57 percent of transactions now being merchant transactions.

The humongous growth is in no small measure powered by the ubiquitous QR code, which millions of merchants have adopted over the last two years. UPI is estimated to have over 330 million unique users and around 70 million merchants deploying over 256 million QR codes across the country.

UPI apps such as PhonePe, Google Pay, Paytm, Cred and Amazon Pay have popularised the payment platform through incentives over the last four five years. Demonetisation and the pandemic accelerated the digitisation of payments in the country along with proactive policy support.