With 19% growth in October, UPI crosses 482 Mn transaction volume

The digital payments railroad UPI has maintained its growth in October. The NPCI-owned payments interface has recorded 482.36 million transactions worth Rs 74,978.27 in last month.

The is an 18.84 per cent increase in transaction volume and 25 per cent increase in transaction value as compared to the previous month.

Cashless transactions have now become simpler and convenient thanks to BHIM UPI. #DigitalIndia #InstantPayments #HighOnUPI @dilipasbe pic.twitter.com/0LY4VxTqLp

— BHIM (@NPCI_BHIM) November 1, 2018

In September, the number of UPI transaction has declined but transaction volume has recorded a significant spike. Last month, UPI had recorded over 30 per cent increase in transaction volume and 10 per cent spike in transaction value.

The decline in the number of transactions also shows the effect of NPCI diktat to control fake transaction within the same account. It means transfer within same account or UPI ID (where the payer and the payee account are actually the same) is not allowed.

Further, the rule has been upgraded and NCPI allowed only 10 transactions per bank account for the peer-to-peer (P2P) segment in a span of 24 hours.

Importantly, UPI new avatar UPI 2.0 also attracted users with various new and important features such as overdraft facility, block payment and signed intent and QR.

Apart from over 122 banks live on UPI, digital payments players such as government-promoted BHIM, and private players such as Paytm, PhonePe, and Google Pay have been a major contributor in the growth of UPI ecosystem.

While BHIM remained flat for the past six months, Paytm and PhonePe have gained the momentum in the period. The Alibaba-backed company had claimed that it registered 137 million transactions contributing over 33 per cent of the overall transactions in September.

BHIM, Paytm, PhonePe and others are yet to unveil their transaction figure for October. It will be interesting to see whether Paytm maintains its dominance or PhonePe will be bounced back like it did in August.