UPI monthly transactions cross 1 crore

Mumbai: Monthly transactions on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has crossed the 1-crore mark in June 2016, just 11 months from its launch. Use of the electronic fund transfer facility has increased more than 10 times since it was launched in August 2016.
Other retail electronic transactions have taken much longer to hit the 1-crore mark. For instance the Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) took more than four years before monthly transactions crossed one crore.
“Transactions on UPI are growing exponentially due to increased acceptance among member banks, merchants and consumers,” said AP Hota, MD & CEO, National Payments Corporation of India. According to Hota the government’s decision to launch BHIM App (Bharat Interface for Money) through NPCI has also been a significant contributor. “Our current focus is on the release of next version of BHIM App with enhanced functionalities,” Hota added.
According to sources, the Bhim app accounts for close to half of all UPI transactions. Yes Bank’s UPI application, in partnership with Flipkart-owned PhonePe, has a large chunk of the market as a result of the offers made by the e-commerce company.
“We have recorded a turnover of over 38 lakh transactions on UPI in the month of June and a large percentage of these are through the PhonePe app,” said Ritesh Pai. “In merchant transactions, we are probably the largest in value terms since we have some of the large e-commerce aggregators empanelled with us for accepting UPI payments,” Pai added.
Use of the payment application has been growing despite effect of demonetisation wearing off and currency in circulation rising close to pre-demonetisation levels. UPI volume (UPI, BHIM and message based UPI) during last three months were 72 lakh, 93.6 lakh and 1.03 crore in April, May and June 2017 respectively. Unified Payments Interface was launched in August 2016 with 21 banks. It is currently being offered by about 50 banks.
UPI enables bank account holders to instantly transfer funds to any other account using their mobile phone without having to know the recipient’s account details.