Ahead of making Unified Payments Interface (UPI), a global product, the NPCI-owned digital payments railroad has achieved a new milestone – one billion transactions in October.
It took almost three years to cross 1 billion transaction mark. Moreover, UPI has been able to rope in 100 million customers in the same period.
In September, UPI had registered 955 million transactions amounting to Rs 1,61,456.56 crore, according to data revealed by NPCI. The payment regulating body is yet to disclose UPI statistics for October.
The rapid growth comes on the back of the rise in UPI adoption mainly dominated by three leading players in this space – PhonePe, Google Pay and Paytm – which control 90% market share in UPI ecosystem.
Government-promoted BHIM and other players such as FreeCharge, Mobikwik, Amazon Pay and WhatsApp (beta phase) are reduced to single-digit in terms of volume.
According to Dilip Asbe, chief executive officer, NPCI, the firm is further aiming to take the user base to 500 million. Besides focusing on peer-to-peer (P2P) payments, NPCI will also expand QR code-based peer-to-merchant(P2M) userbase to 30 million from 10 million, outlines a TOI report.
Where Paytm and PhonePe have been leading the UPI-based merchant payment segment, Sequoia Capital-backed BharatPe has also emerged as the fastest-growing and third distant app in this space.
Waiving off merchant fees for payments up to Rs 100 has helped UPI for faster adoption among merchants.
For the next phase of growth and scale, NPCI is also planning for incentivising digital payments via QR code on UPI so that consumers and merchants can get tax benefits upon sharing their PAN and GSTIN details.
According to minutes of recommendations passed by NPCI, the steering committee has decided to cap market share to a maximum of 33%. The move might help other apps, including BHIM, to increase their user base and volume.
Of late, BHIM had introduced a new version, which includes increased monthly transaction limit, discount/offers on third-party apps and option of applying for initial public offerings.
