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The widely popular Unified Payments Interface (UPI) crossed the 500-crore mark in terms of volume and was close to touching the ₹10-lakh crore milestone in value terms in March this year. UPI processed as many as 540.56 crore payments last month amounting to ₹9,60,581.66 crore, data from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) revealed.
In contrast, it had processed 452.74 crore transactions worth ₹8,26,843 crore in February this year. For the full fiscal 2021-22, it crossed the $1 trillion mark at ₹84,17,572.48 crore payments. UPI had crossed the 100-crore mark in volume terms in October 2019 and after a dip in April 2020, it has since been gaining widespread adoption.
There were as many as 315 banks live on the UPI platform by March this year. On a daily basis, UPI has been processing a high value of transactions. Recent data reveals that over 17 crore payments worth over ₹20,000 crore have been made via UPI on a daily basis.
‘Pandemic push’
“Acceptance at a huge number of merchant locations with easy, rapid, and frictionless payments, including the use of QR codes, is another critical aspect of UPI’s massive size. Customers’ trust behaviour, on the other side, is the result of the availability of extremely secure UPI architecture,” said Manoj Chopra, Head Innovation and Product Development, Kiya.ai.
“To a considerable extent, the pandemic also aided in boosting digital payments usage, including UPI transactions, and, most critically, the government’s massive push for digital transactions, including demonetisation,” added Chopra.
In 2021-22, it is estimated that 60 per cent of volumes of retail payments came from UPI. Features like AutoPay, Prepaid vouchers, UPI123Pay and UPI Lite are expected to further aid the adoption of the payments channel along with usage in countries including Singapore, Bhutan, UAE, and Nepal.
Smaller transactions
NPCI is soon launching UPI Lite for small value transactions in offline mode. Other means of digital payments also saw robust growth in March. The Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) processed 49.2 crore transactions valued at ₹4,62,278.8 crore last month as against 42.09 crore payments worth ₹3,84,404.01 crore payments in February 2022.4.1
Similarly, as many as 27.04 crore transactions totalling ₹4,095.3 crore were made through NETC FASTags as compared to 24.36 crore payments worth ₹3,631.22 crore in February. Aadhar Enabled Payments System processed 10.52 crore payments of ₹29,162.68 crore in March as against 9.44 crore transactions of ₹25,514.75 crore in February.
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