As UPI touches new peak, digital transactions witness decline in value and volume

Digital transactions in February have shown shrinking, in terms of volume as well as value. According to provisional data released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the number of digital transactions declined marginally to 1.09 billion in February from 1.12 billion in the preceding month.

As far as the value of transactions is concerned, the last month witnessed a fall of 12.5 per cent from Rs 131.9 trillion in January to 115.5 trillion in February.

Notably, digital transactions include payments through credit and debit cards, the unified payments interface (UPI), unstructured supplementary service data (USSD), prepaid payment instruments (PPIs) and internet banking.

The volume of PPI transactions in February was 113.1 million as compared to 113.6 million in January. Debit and credit card usage at point-of-sale (PoS) machines also witnessed a fall in February.

While the volume of transactions decreased by around 8.8% in February to 247.1 million transactions from 271.1 million transactions in January, the value of transactions fell by around 11% to Rs 465.9 billion from Rs 521.9 billion in the same time period.

Payments using National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) and Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) fell by around 2.7% and 4.8%, respectively, in February from the preceding month.

Meanwhile, UPI has shown a decent record in February in terms of transaction volume as well as value. The flagship product of National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), UPI witnessed about 13 per cent (12.89 per cent) growth in total transaction volume in last month.

UPI-based payments recorded 171.40 million transactions in February which was standing at 151.83 million in the previous month. As far as transaction value is concerned, February month saw a 22 per cent growth. The transacted value grew from Rs 15,571 crore in January to Rs 19,126 crore in February.

The development was first reported by Mint.