New Delhi, NFAPost: According to data from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), Unified Payments Interface (UPI) crossed the value of $100 billion transactions for the first time in the month of October, making it the most popular digital payments system in India.
For October 2021, NPCI reported 4.21 billion UPI transactions amounting to Rs 7.71 lakh crore (about $103 billion), a 15.3% rise from September’s transaction volume of 3.65 billion and an 18.6% rise from August’s 3.55 billion transactions.
The growth in October was fuelled by the shopping spree marking the beginning of the festival season and e-commerce sales. With higher vaccination rates and further relaxation of norms, people also started stepping out for purchases more often in October.
With its focus on digitizing the cash-based economy, the government and the Reserve Bank of India started the UPI through the NPCI five years ago in August 2016. Since then, it has passed several significant milestones. It crossed a billion transactions for the first time in October 2019, and the next billion came in under a year.
Since the start of 2021, monthly transaction value has grown by close to 79% from Rs 4.31 lakh crore in January. The number of transactions, meanwhile, have increased by more than 83% from 230 crore in January.
