UPI records 1.15 billion transactions in October

While sources already revealed that UPI had crossed 1 billion transaction milestone in October, for the very first time, the regulating entity NPCI has officially announced the development today.

The digital payments railroad has registered 1,150 million ~ 1.15 billion transactions, last months. This is approximately 20% increase in volume and an 18.5% hike in the value of the transactions in October as compared to the previous month.

In October, the amount of transactions stands at Rs 1,91,360 crore.

It took almost three years to reach the figure for UPI, which is going global soon. In this period, UPI has reportedly on-boarded 100 million customers while chasing 500 customer base in the next three years.

The transactions volume break up will make more sense when leading UPI-focused digital payments firms such as PhonePe, Google Pay and Paytm reveal their monthly data.

So far, PhonePe has been leading the race with over 34% market share followed by Google Pay.

Apart from peer-to-peer (P2P) payments, NPCI will also expand QR code-based peer-to-merchant(P2M) userbase to 30 million that will see players like Paytm, PhonePe and BharatPe to up their ante in UPI-based merchant payments ecosystem.

NPCI-owned instant real-time inter-bank electronic funds transfer system, IMPS, has also recorded significant growth of 16% to 236.93 million in terms of volume.

Meanwhile, the government's effort for strengthening financial inclusion through Aadhaar has started bearing fruit. Aadhaar-enabled payments system (AePS), which allows online interoperable financial inclusion transaction at PoS (MicroATM) through any bank using the Aadhaar authentication, has recorded 218.04 million transactions worth Rs 10,823.12 crore in October.

Apart from UPI, IMPS, BHIM and Bharat BillPay, National Electronic Toll Collection (NETC) program developed by NPCI is also getting wide adoption in India.

To make it easier for travellers, all toll plazas will be converted to FASTags for four-wheeler starting from December 1.