UPI crosses 1.34 Bn transaction in 28 days of July; to break all previous records

Data of 28 days in July shows UPI is set to better its previous best numbers in June in terms of processing volume and amount of transactions, steadily coming out of the sharp drop it registered during the lockdown in April remarkably well.

UPI has recorded 1340.82 million or 1.34 billion transactions amounting to Rs 2,58,244 crore or Rs 2.58 trillion until July 28, shows the data released by RBI. UPI had registered 1336.93 million transactions in June worth Rs 2,61,835 crore.

While the volume in 28 days has already crossed the previous month record, the amount of transactions processed via UPI looks set to be a new record too. At this rate, UPI is likely to register around 1.49 billion transactions, making it the best ever month for the NPCI-owned digital payments interface.

In April, the number of transactions had fallen to 999 million due to the nationwide lockdown that had halted almost all kinds of business activities.

The numbers have bounced back to its pre-Covid days as people are preferring online payments, especially UPI, to pay for grocery, medicine, daily essentials to electronics and gadgets buying. 

The wide adoption of Google Pay, PhonePe, Paytm and other UPI-based apps have driven this growth as people have been avoiding swiping credit and debit cards due to fear of the spread of the Coronavirus.

Besides peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions, India also saw a surge in peer-to-merchant (P2M) transactions during and after the lockdown. In the P2M payments space, PhonePe, Google Pay and Paytm are the top three players while Amazon Pay and BharatPe have also emerged as significant market share holders.

To increase the adoption of digital payments and bring more merchants into the ecosystem, RBI has set up a committee to study on interoperability, scalability, innovation, awareness, privacy and security of QR Code payments system. 

In its report, RBI also criticized the decision of zero MDR on QR Code, UPI and Rupay debit card by the government and said that it had a negative impact on the digital payments ecosystem.

NPCI’s CEO Dilip Asbe also supported the concerns raised by RBI and emphasised that MDR is necessary and it may come back soon.