UPI records second ever fall in transaction volume, witnesses 4.5% decline in July

UPI is nothing but a next gen payments application on which a majority of banks and payments app relies on. As UPI 2.0 is slated to launch this month, customers expectation is increasing in terms of new feature, transaction limit and seamless experience of digital payments in the country.

In June, the NPCI-owned payments platform has witnessed a remarkable growth of 30 per cent in terms of transaction volume and 22 per cent in transaction value.

However, the figure for July month is below expectation as UPI transaction witnessed 235.65 million transaction, a decline of 4.5 per cent in terms of volume,

Cashless transactions have now become simpler and convenient thanks to BHIM UPI. #DigitalIndia #InstantPayments #HighOnUPI @dilipasbe pic.twitter.com/qSQhUcjDRw

— BHIM (@NPCI_BHIM) August 1, 2018

" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> reveals NPCI data. This is the second time since its inception when the government-run platform witnessed a downfall in comparison to the previous month.

In May, this year, the volume of the transaction recorded by UPI was 189.48 million a marginal fall from April month when it registered 190.08 million ttransactions

As far as transaction value is concerned, UPI has maintained its growth chart in July with 12 per cent increase to Rs 45,845.64 crore.

The steep fall in transaction volume comes at a time when NPCI announced to ban payments transfer within same account or UPI ID (where the payer and the payee account are actually the same) by August 1.

However, the announcement was made only 10 days ago and the rule is slated to be applicable from today, the step to curb fake or artificial transactions by NPCI will affect the transaction volume in the coming days.

The clampdown will also affect the transaction volume play of leading digital payments app such as Paytm, PhonePe, and government-run BHIM.

In a recent conversation with YourStory, PhonePe said that it supports this circular, stating that this will ensure that transactions are not artificially inflated by digital payments firms.

Earlier both Paytm and PhonePe had been claiming pole position in UPI transaction share. PhonePe had cried foul over Paytm's claim of higher transactions. It alleged that many Paytm users transferred nominal amount for the sake of driving number of transacations.

Meanwhile, NPCI also revealed the transaction data for one of its fastest payments service ie IMPS. For July, the immediate payment service has recorded a 5.7 per cent increase in transaction volume, while value soars by 3.67 per cent.