MUMBAI: The ubiquitous real-time digital payment platform UPI continues its dominance, with transactions during the Dhanteras-to-Diwali period rising at a faster pace than any other mode of payment. The average UPI volume jumped to 736.9 million each day from 568.4 million a year ago, registering a whopping 30% in transaction count.
According to the latest NPCI data, however, in value terms, the growth has been just 2.7% to Rs 87,569 crore each day from Rs 75,801 crore, suggesting that low-ticket retail and merchant payments now make up the larger share of overall digital transactions.
According to the NPCI, this means that UPI transactions have tripled in the past four years—from 245.4 million in 2022 to 420.5 million in 2023 and further to 568.4 million in 2024 and to 736.9 million in 2025 so far.
During the 2022 Diwali season, the value of UPI payments stood at Rs 43,785 crore, which more than doubled in three years to Rs 87,569 crore this year.
The record-breaking Diwali numbers are part of a larger trend of UPI's exponential growth with monthly transactions in October 2024 printing in at Rs 23.50 trillion across 16.58 billion transactions.
Meanwhile, showing the rising level of indebtedness of the public, credit card spends also logged robust growth, especially for online purchases. Credit card e-commerce volumes grew 22% on-year even as debit card e-commerce usage fell 24%, indicating a shift towards credit-based digital spending.
For the second consecutive year, credit-card e-commerce transactions outpaced point-of-sale swipes—4.8 million vs 4.2 million, indicating the dominance of online retail over in-store shopping. But the growth momentum moderated with overall credit-card transactions rising 22%, slower than the 25.5% a year earlier. Offline spending, by contrast, rebounded sharply with point of sale transactions clipping at 15.6%, the highest in three years, after contracting 0.9% last festive season.
On the other hand, debit-card payments continued their decline, with point of sale volumes and values going down 11% and 9%, respectively while prepaid instruments such as wallets and gift cards saw the steepest fall of 26% in volumes and over 50% in value.
