After launching UPI-integrated payment system in November 2016 for PayU users only, the company has now included Citrus Pay in the bandwagon by integrating the acquired entity with the government regulated payment platform.
The Nasper-owned payment gateway service provider, along with Citrus pay, will provide the facility to its 30 Million consumers and 300,000 merchants, which includes major players such as BookMyShow, MakeMyTrip and Ibibo.
PayU’s UPI facility has been in the pilot stage for the past two and a half months and is being used by about 3,00,000 customers. The integration with UPI comes at a time when its payment business has crossed transactions worth $1 billion in June this year, a significant jump from the $700 million in March 2017.
Till date, the UPI ecosystem includes major public and private sector banks and payment gateways such as Paytm, MobiKwik, AmazonPay, CCAvenue , Razorpay, BillDesk and PayU Money that support UPI.
India’s UPI platform has grown to include over 50 banks currently, as per data from National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).
As per ET report, Jitendra Gupta, MD of PayU said, “In the first year of our wallet business, we never crossed volumes beyond Rs 10 crore in peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions. But (with UPI), we have crossed over Rs 12 crore worth of transactions in the past 3 months itself.”
Gupta also added that, “We wanted to test our Citrus UPI app initially and check for initial adoption there. We haven’t spent anything on marketing for that. We have opened it only to our wallet users so far.”
PayU has a strong presence in in Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. With an active user base of 30 million, it claims to process 150 million transactions in 2016 worth a combined $4.2 billion.
In December 2016, the government launched Bharat Interface for Money, or BHIM app, has been downloaded over 20 million times and accounts for nearly 40% of all UPI transactions.
