Unified payments interface (UPI) has, for the first time since its inception in 2016, registered over 1.3 billion transactions worth Rs 2 trillion (Rs 2,02,506 crore) during December 2019, ending the year on a high note.
This is decent growth for UPI, which crossed 1 billion transactions for the very first time in October and recorded 1.22 billion transactions worth Rs 1.89 trillion (or Rs 1,89,224 crore) in the following month – November.
Notably, UPI has been running on par with IMPS in terms of the value of total transactions. The NPCI-owned instant real-time inter-bank electronic funds transfer system has recorded 256.47 million worth Rs 2.1 trillion ( Rs 2,10,934.23 crore) in December.
So far, IMPS handles most of the online payments via internet banking round the clock. It’s worth noting that NEFT also began enabling 24*7 service last month.
With 100 million-plus users on the digital payments mode, UPI has majorly been dominated by private players such as PhonePe, Google Pay and Paytm. The initial success of the interoperable mobile number-based payments service is also gearing up for an international launch.
According to media reports, UPI will start overseas operations from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Singapore. The move will help it to achieve the projected 500 million users in the next two years.
Unlike private players, the government promoted BHIM has been continuously losing the market share. According to data available on NPCI, BHIM contributed a mere 1.29% in the overall transactions via UPI in November.
Amidst NPCI’s proposal over capping limit for an individual market share in UPI ecosystem, PhonePe, Google Pay and Paytm didn’t give knowledge about their volume of business from the past four months.
