BENGALURU: The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) continues to dominate the payment channel in the country as UPI transaction volume increased from 4.6 billion transactions in January 2022 to 9.3 billion in June 2023, and the transaction value has also increased from Rs 8.3 lakh crore to Rs 14.7 lakh crore in the corresponding period, says Worldline's Digital Payments Report for H1 2023.
Released on Tuesday, the report says mobile phones continue to drive digital transactions as the number of mobile transactions in the first half of this year was 52.15 billion compared to 33.55 billion in the same period last year.
Interestingly, the average ticket size was reduced by 10% from Rs 1,774 in H1 2022 to Rs 1,604 in H1 2023.
The report says this decrease suggests a deeper embedding of UPI by being used for smaller or micro transactions and this dip has been primarily driven by the growth in person-to-merchant (P2M) transactions.
Both person-to-person (P2P) and P2M transactions have clocked good growth numbers. While P2P transactions grew from 18.62 billion transactions in H1 2022 to 22.75 billion in H1 2023; a 22% increase, P2M transactions volume grew from 13.33 billion to 29.15 billion, a 119% increase.
PhonePe, Google Pay, and Paytm are dominant in terms of volume and value, and in terms of transaction volume, in June 2023, the three apps accounted for 95.68% of all transactions compared to 94.55% a year ago.
In terms of transaction value, the three accounted for 93.65% in June 2023 compared to 93.38% in June 2022.
As far as cards are concerned, the value of card transactions in the first half of this year was Rs 11.35 lakh crore, an increase of 11.7% from H1 2022, and this growth was largely supported by credit cards.
Credit card transaction value in the first half of this year was Rs 7.94 lakh crore, a rise of 30.5% from the same period last year.
During the same period, debit cards transaction value was Rs 3.17 lakh crore, a fall of 14.8% while prepaid cards were Rs 32,500 crore, a fall of 32.8%.
Ramesh Narasimhan, CEO - India, Worldline, said, "Every passing month serves as a testament to the rapid adoption of digital payments. The allure of digital payments beckons both consumers and merchants alike, evolving it into an indispensable facet."