BENGALURU: United Payments Interface (UPI) transactions surged by nearly 9.5% month-on-month in volume terms for August at 3.55 billion whereas the value of payments was up by 5.4% at Rs 6,39,116 crore, the latest data released by the National Payments Corporation of India suggested.
UPI, which has a major share amongst all modes of digital payments, clocked 3 billion transactions for the first time in July valued at Rs 6,06,281 crore.
All other forms of digital payments including Aadhar enabled Payments System (Aeps), Immediate Payment Service(Imps), Fastag , Bharat Bill Pay saw a surge in volume and value transactions for August compared to previous months.
During FY21, digital payments had witnessed a 13.4% YoY drop in value terms, as per RBI annual Report, 2020-21, led by lower growth in Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system and decrease in transactions of paper based instruments.
The RBI said in its report that the decline in value of transactions in RTGS is largely attributable to the subdued economic activity.
The impact of second wave on RGTS which is usually used as a payment system by large firms, was more pronounced with transactions value declining by 35% ( April-May), at Rs 83.6 lakh crore.
The UPI transactions had marginally fallen by (2-2.5%) worth Rs 4.93 lakh crore in May, 2021 as against Rs 5.04 lakh crore in March, 2021. Walmart-backed PhonePe maintained its lead in the UPI market share at 46% followed by Google Pay (34.45%) and Paytm (11.9%) respectively.
The NPCI earlier this year notified a 2-years deadline to the market leaders to limit their UPI transactions share to 30%, in order to create a level playing field.
The digital payment firms have also been directed not to charge the Merchant Discount rates (MDR) on various payment modes including debit cards powered by Rupay, UPI and UPI Quick Response Code, a move which has been strongly condemned by the industry leaders reasoning that this will dilute their margins to almost zero.
Market leaders
Walmart-backed PhonePe maintained its lead in the UPI market share at 46% followed by Google Pay (34.45%) and Paytm (11.9%) respectively.
The NPCI earlier this year notified a 2-year deadline to the market leaders to limit their UPI transactions share to 30%, in order to create a level playing field