Amritsar, NFA Post: Unified Payments Interface (UPI)-based payments hit an all-time high in October with 207 crore transactions, data released by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) showed. The platform had recorded 180 crore transactions in September.
Digital transactions, which were already on a rise in the country, got a thrust from the Covid-19 induced nationwide lockdown and continuing pandemic situation, as the public has a fear of contracting a virus with physical currency exchange, and finds UPI-enabled apps as one of the most favoured modes of payments. Even older age groups have started relying on UPI-based transactions for regular needs.
Additionally, spending during the festive season seems to be one of the major reasons behind the spike in transaction volume during this particular month.
UPI transactions had touched the 100 crore-mark in October last year when 114.83 crore transactions took place on the platform.
The transactions made in October this year were worth 3.3 trillion rupees, according to the data. Almost 189 banks are live on the UPI platform.
“BHIM UPI has managed to change the face of person-to-person and person-to-merchant money transfers in the past few years while making them safer and more secure,” NPCI tweeted on Sunday.
NPCI is an umbrella organisation introduced in 2008 for operating retail payments and settlement systems in India.
Since its launch in 2017, the NPCI-owned smartphone-based digital payment platform has grown in volume every month, except the Apr-May period this year due to the nationwide shutdown.
UPI transactions, however, recorded sharp recovery from June onwards, and it just took six months for it to double from a low of 99.95 lakh in April.
Among the UPI-enabled apps, Google Pay has been dominating for long in terms of processing the number of transactions followed by PhonePe and Paytm. The trio control close to 95% market share in UPI.
