Exclusive: UPI crossed 660 Mn transactions in first half of June; may create a new record

After bouncing back in terms of monthly transactions in May, unified payments interface or UPI is on track to post one of the highest figures in the volume of transactions for June.

According to Reserve Bank of India data on payments system, UPI has already crossed 663 million transactions in 15 days in June amounting to Rs 1,34,934.76 crore. To put things in perspective, UPI had recorded 1234.50 million or 1.23 billion transactions worth Rs 2,18,391.60 crore in May.

“Looking at the previous records and sudden surge in transactions after relaxation in lockdown, UPI may break all previous records in terms of volume as well as value in June. However, nothing can be speculated and the frequency of transactions could vary in the latter half of the month,” said one of the sources who track UPI ecosystem closely.

At this run rate, UPI transactions are expected to grow at 7% in June as compared to May.

The NPCI-owned digital payments railroad had crossed 1 billion in volume in October 2019 and since then it has continued to process over a billion transactions every month, except in April 2020. In May, it clocked 1.23 billion transactions amounting to Rs 2,18,392 crore, a 24.4% surge in volume and 44.5% rise in the value of transactions as compared to the previous month.

The spike in volume was led by third party app Google Pay which registered 541 million transactions followed by PhonePe with 444 million and Paytm with 124 million transactions. In the previous month, Google Pay’s volume stood at 430 million while PhonePe and Paytm did 365 million and 125 million respectively.

Entrackr had exclusively reported the split figures for Google Pay, PhonePe and Paytm for April and May.

“Like the previous months, Google Pay has led the pack followed by PhonePe and Paytm in terms of market share. The current UPI transactions data also include BHIM and USSD,” said the above-quoted person.

Apart from UPI, NPCI’s instant payments facility IMPS has also recorded a promising figure with over 100 million transactions worth Rs 1,07,158.66 crore in the last 15 days of the ongoing month, added the report.

In May, IMPS recorded 166.68 million transactions amounting to Rs 1,69,401.68 crore.