UPI records 2.3 Bn transactions worth Rs 4.3 Tn in January

Unified Payments Interface or UPI has registered 2.3 billion transactions worth Rs 4,31,181 crore or Rs 4.31 trillion in January, according to data released by National Payments Corporation of India.

This is a 3% jump in volume and a 3.6% surge in value for UPI from December, which had seen 2.23 billion transactions amounting to Rs 4,16,176.21 crore or Rs 4.16 trillion. 

While NPCI has not released the market share of UPI apps for January, PhonePe emerged as the largest market shareholder in terms of the number of transactions in December, dethroning its arch-rival Google Pay from the top position. PhonePe had recorded 902.03 million transactions worth Rs 182,126.88 crore in December whereas Google Pay registered 854.49 million transactions amounting to Rs 176,199.33 crore during the same period.

PhonePe and Google Pay together control close to 80% market share in the UPI ecosystem whereas Paytm, Amazon Pay, BHIM and others command the rest.

In early November, NPCI had also allowed WhatsApp to roll out its UPI-based payments feature for more users. However, the Facebook-owned instant messenger has not been able to grab the anticipated momentum in the initial two months. According to NPCI data, WhatsApp registered only 0.81 million transactions worth Rs 29.72 crore in December and 0.31 million transactions worth Rs 13.87 crore in the previous month.

Besides these apps, UPI-based banking apps -- Yes Bank and ICICI Bank -- have been leading in terms of processing volume of transactions through their own UPI platforms. Yes Bank had recorded 19.54 million transactions followed by ICICI’s 8.58 million transactions in December. The data for January is yet to be published.

In December, Union Bank of India and State Bank of India or SBI are among the top remitter banks to face a surge in failure in transactions for UPI. During the period, Union Bank of India and SBI recorded the highest rate of technical decline at 10.75% and 8.96%, respectively. The technical decline is transaction declined due to technical reasons such as unavailability of systems and network issues on bank or NPCI side.