UPI records over 2 Bn transactions in October

UPI has registered 2.07 billion transactions worth Rs 3,86,106 crore in October, data released by NPCI shows. In comparison with September, this is 15% and 17.3% surge in volume and value, respectively.

The NPCI-owned digital payments system had already crossed one billion mark in the first 15 days of the last month and it was anticipated that it would register more than two billion in 31 days. It took UPI three years to reach one billion transaction mark and only one year to cross 2 billion.

While spending during the festive season appears to be one of the major reasons behind the spike in transaction volume, UPI users have also reported frequent failure in transactions for the past couple of weeks.

According to a CNBC TV 18 report, NCPI is working on an online dispute resolution system to address the issue of failures on UPI transactions. The report also added that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has asked payment operators, which includes banks and non-banks, to work on dispute resolution.

In the UPI ecosystem, Google Pay has been dominating for a long time in terms of processing the number of transactions followed by PhonePe and Paytm. The trio control close to 95% marketshare in UPI.

The ongoing pandemic and the fear of contracting a virus with physical currency has also helped UPI-enabled apps to grow as they have become one of the most favoured modes of payments. 

The wide adoption of UPI apps could be noticed from Sensor Tower data. According to the data intelligence platform, Google Pay was downloaded more than 12 million times in September of which over 80% installs came from India. PhonePe, Paytm and SBI YONO’s downloads in the month were recorded at 6.9 million, 3.9 million and 3.1 million respectively.

To ease the process of payment at merchant points and promote interoperability, RBI had recently asked all payments operators to stop issuing new proprietary QR codes and switch to at least one interoperable QR code by March 31, 2022.