Transactions through the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) zoomed past the 200-crore mark in October amidst the festive season and sustained preference for digital payments in the ongoing pandemic.
Data with the National Payments Corporation of India revealed that UPI transactions amounted to 207.16 crore in October, processing ₹3.86 lakh crore of payments last month. As many as 189 banks are live on the UPI platform.
A large number of payment players have reported a spike in UPI payments during the ongoing festive season.
It took just six months for UPI transactions to double from a low of 99.95 lakh in April this year in the midst of the national lockdown.
Originally, UPI transactions had crossed the 100-crore mark in October last year when 114.83 crore transactions took place on the platform.
“BHIM UPI has managed to change the face of person-to-person and person-to-merchant money transfers in the past few years, while making them safer and more secure,” NPCI said in a tweet on Sunday.
In September 2020, 180 crore transactions amounting to ₹3.29 lakh crore were processed on the UPI platform.
Meanwhile, transactions through the Immediate Payments Service (IMPS) also touched a new peak of 31.89 crore processing payments worth ₹2.74 lakh crore in October this year. It had processed 27.96 crore transactions amounting to ₹2.48 lakh crore in September.
With the opening up of the economy post the lockdown, transactions on FASTag also rose to 12.23 crore amounting to ₹2,137.16 crore in October as against 11 crore transactions worth ₹1,940.6 crore in September.
Transactions on Bharat BillPay also rose marginally to 2.37 crore in October from 2.31 crore in September and processed ₹3,961.41 crore of payments last month.
“Consumers can now make their recurring payments for over 19,000-plus billers conveniently through any Bharat BillPay enabled channels,” NPCI said.
However, the number of approved transactions on the Aadhaar-enabled Payment System (AePS), which plays a key role in direct benefit transfers declined further to 28.96 crore in October from 29.82 crore in September.
The value of payments also came down to ₹18,603.06 crore last month.
Transactions in terms of numbers and values in AePS have been falling since August this year.
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.