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The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is keen to further popularise its flagship Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which has clocked over 100 crore transactions per month.
“We want to target everyone who has a smartphone or a bank account to switch to UPI transactions, from cash. This runs into a potential user base of 500 million,” Praveena Rai, COO, NPCI, told BusinessLine.
While UPI has already shown robust growth, Rai said, the objective is to reach out to the next set of users, across geographies, and encourage them to switch from cash. With this in mind, NPCI, along with payment service providers, has co-created an industry campaign ‘UPI Chalega ’, to promote it as an easy, safe and instant mode of payment.
“The campaign is aimed to guide users towards the right use of UPI and help create a habitual change, to use UPI in their daily lives. The campaign also focusses on the safety aspects while transacting on UPI-enabled apps,” NPCI said in a statement.
The number of UPI transactions touched 130.5 crore last month, and the total amount transacted was at an all-time high of ₹2.16-lakh crore. As many as 144 banks are on the platform.
Rai declined to comment on the issue of zero merchant discount rate (MDR), which is creating concerns amongst players over revenue margins. The campaign is aimed at promoting a greater use case for UPI among consumers, she said.
Pre-campaign study
The findings of a pre-campaign study conducted among 12,800 people in four zones, across 36 centres, showed a 60 per cent awareness of UPI, Rai said.
She added that early adopters of UPI have come from across geographies — metros and smaller cities — and now the idea is to push it to the next set of users.
Launched in 2016 as a means to boost digital payments, UPI allows users to transfer money on a real-time basis, across multiple bank accounts, without revealing bank account details to the other party.
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