UPI records its second-highest value of transactions in May

After a sharp fall in transactions in April, Unified Payments Interface or UPI has regained its previous momentum and posted 1.23 billion transactions in May, according to the data provided by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). 

UPI has registered 1.23 billion transactions amounting to Rs 2,18,392 crore in May. In comparison to April, this is 24.4% surge in volume and 44.5% rise in value of transactions.

While the number of transactions is still low as compared to March and previous months, UPI has recorded its second best figures in terms of the value of transactions in May. In February, UPI processed 1.32 billion transactions worth Rs 2,22,516.95 crore, which is the highest in terms of volume and as well as value.

Experts tracking the space had been emphasising that digital transactions would not be affected due to Covid-19 pandemic as people are opting cashless mode of transactions to avoid the spread of the virus. 

On the peer-to-peer payments(P2P) front, Google Pay is the biggest player, followed by PhonePe and Paytm while PhonePe leads the Peer-to-merchant(P2M) pack.

As Entrackr reported last month, Google Pay recorded 430 million P2P UPI transactions out of total 999.57 million in April. PhonePe and Paytm registered over 365 million and 125 million transactions, respectively. In the P2M segment, PhonePe processed 180 million in volume, followed by Google Pay and Paytm at their respective volume of transactions at 164 million and 69 million.

It’s worth noting that Paytm, which was one of the top UPI-based payments apps, has now reduced their dependency on UPI to focus on banking services that include wallet, IMPS, NEFT and RTGS. 

Apart from UPI, NPCI’s instant payments feature IMPS has also recorded a sharp fall in the past two months. In March, IMPS was at its peak and clocked 216.82 million transactions worth Rs 2,01,961.70 crore, which reduced to 122.47 million transactions worth Rs 1,21,140.79 crore in April and 166.68 million transactions worth Rs 1,69.401.68 crore in May.