Digital payments dropped in April with the national lockdown to control the coronavirus pandemic keeping people inside their homes, shutting downs most shops and restaurants and disrupting most business operations.

Transactions processed through the government’s flagship Unified Payments Interface remained buoyant but fell below the 100 crore mark in April, which is the lowest since September 2019. Digital transactions fell even in March as people began to work from home, and later the national lockdown was announced.

According to data released by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) on Friday, BHIM UPI processed 99 crore transactions in April involving Rs 1.51 lakh crore. Transactions on the platform stood at 125 crore in March 2020 involving Rs 2.06 lakh crore.

Before this, the lowest level in UPI transactions was in September 2019 when a total of 95.5 crore UPI transactions took place.

In a recent interaction with BusinessLine , Praveena Rai, COO, NPCI had noted that though the volume of digital payments may be going down due to the current lockdown, certain categories like bill payments, recharges and payments to supermarkets see growth in volume.

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Meanwhile, the number of transactions on Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) also halved in April to 12.24 crore from 21.68 crore in March. A total of Rs 1.21 lakh crore transactions were processed on IMPS in April as against Rs 2.01 lakh crore in March.

With largely the movement of essential goods allowed during the lockdown, transactions on NETC Fastag also dropped to 1.02 crore in April from 8.45 crore in March.

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