Digital payments saw significant growth in August, with the Centre’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and IMPS touching record highs in terms of both volumes and number of transactions, while payments on BHIM also rose to a 10-month high.

Data with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) revealed that UPI, which had witnessed a decline in transaction value for two straight months, bounced back in August with an 11.6 per cent growth in the number of transactions, compared to July 2019.

The total number of money transfer transactions through UPI hit an all-time high at 91.83 crore in August and was at ₹1.54-lakh crore, against ₹1.46-lakh crore in July.

In value terms, UPI transactions had fallen for two straight months in June and July this year.

Meanwhile, IMPS payments continued to scale new heights, touching a record of 20 crore transactions last month. In terms of value as well, IMPS recorded an all-time high of ₹1.88-lakh crore worth of payments in August, compared to ₹1.82-lakh crore in July.

Similarly, payments through the BHIM app also recovered, rising to a 10-month high of 1.68 crore in August amounting to ₹6,132.10 crore, against ₹6,121.67 crore in July.

With Google Play Store now accepting payments through BHIM UPI, the payments channel is likely to see further growth.

BHIM had hit an all-time high of 1.82 crore transactions in October last year.

The surge in digital payments comes at a time when currency in circulation is also at a peak. However, industry players say that the size of the payments market is huge and that there is tremendous scope for digital payments to grow along with cash usage.

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