BHIM falls flat as UPI transactions grow

At the time when UPI (Unified Payments Interface) transaction has been witnessing a massive month-on-month growth, the Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM) UPI app shows a slight increase in growth.

In the month of December 2017, the BHIM UPI app transacted a total volume of 9.1 million with transactions worth Rs 3,083.2 crore, according to Medianama.

While UPI transactions saw a total increase of about 38 percent, there were 145 million transactions in December 2017.

The growth of BHIM has remained almost stagnant month-on-month. It recorded only 8.2 million transactions in November with a meager growth of 8 per cent from the previous month. The total amount of transactions in November were Rs 2553.5 crore.

According to National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), in October 2017, number of transactions using BHIM slightly increased to 7.63 million from 7.6 million last month, while Rs 2348.7 crore were transacted on the platform, a growth of 5 per cent from the previous month.

In September 2017, BHIM app witnessed a marginal increase of 0.8 million in the number of transactions from the previous month and the total amount transactions stood at Rs 2245.3 crore.

Meanwhile, the value of UPI transactions rose about 36 per cent to Rs 13,174 crore in December from Rs 9,679 crore in November. The number of monthly transactions stood at 105 million in November period.

In the last one year, the UPI transaction volume has risen by more than 7000 per cent, according to RBI data.

Currently, there are 61 banks live on UPI platform, however, a major portion of transactions are being driven by smartphone-based payment applications such as Google’s Tez, Flipkart-owned PhonePe and BHIM.

The National Payments Corporations of India had launched the interface for low-value payments and fund transfer across banks in April 2016. The transactions are increasing as more e-commerce players and banks roll out their UPI interface.

In November, Paytm had integrated BHIM UPI onto its platform as it looks to double its monthly user base over the next two years. Unlike PhonePe and BHIM, Paytm would be leveraging its merchant base for driving Unique Payment Interface-based transaction.

The mobile payments market is growing rapidly in India. A report by Research and Markets found country’s mobile wallet market grew 48.85 per cent during the period of four years (2012-2016). This growth was fueled by rising smartphone penetration, increasing mobile internet penetration and rising disposable income.