UPI transactions down by Rs 13,000 crore in April

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UPI (Unified Payments Gateway) transactions in April witnessed a dip of Rs 13,000 crore compared to March this year, according to National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) data.

This is the first instance of decline in the amount since the outbreak of the virus and restrictions imposed from end-March 2020.

With physical distancing norms being followed all over the country, UPI transactions fast became a preferred choice for retail payments among a large section of the population.

Since March last year, digital transaction over UPI and other platforms increased more than 500 times.

Decline

NPCI has reported 2.64 billion payments over UPI in April 2021, representing a 3% decrease in volume from 2.73 billion transactions reported in March this year.

The value of transaction also decreased by more than 2%, from Rs 5.04 lakh crore to Rs 4.92 lakh crore over the same period.

Experts felt rising COVID cases may be one of the reasons behind this dip, as several states resorted to lockdowns, curfews and other restrictions to keep the infection in control.

Trends

In April 2020, UPI transactions stood just over 99 crore. The transaction value dropped to Rs 1.51 lakh crore from Rs 2.05 lakh crore (in March) as all major services were shut.

After that dip UPI transaction rose steadily before suffering a fall again in April, 2021.

UPI currently controls 73%-74% share of the total digital transaction market (according to volume) in India.

UPI payments have grown 93% Y-o-Y to over Rs 41 lakh crore in FY21. UPI processed transactions worth Rs 4.25 lakh crore in February 2021, almost doubling from Rs 2.22 lakh crore in February last year.

The UPI transaction volume also grew from 1.32 Billion to 2.2 billion in the same time frame.

The average ticket size of an UPI transaction increased 58% to Rs 1,800 in FY21 from Rs 1,200 in FY18.

What is UPI?

Unified Payments Interface or UPI is a system that gives the permission to use multiple bank accounts into a single mobile application, merging several banking features, seamless fund routing & merchant payments into one platform, i.e. BHIM, Paytm, Google Pay, etc.

It also caters to the “Peer to Peer” collect request which can be scheduled and paid as per requirement and convenience of the customer.

NPCI conducted a pilot launch with 21 member banks.

The pilot launch was on April 11, 2016 by Raghuram Rajan, who was the governor of Reserve Bank of India. Banks have started their UPI enabled transaction from August, 25, 2016.

In April, 2021 a total of 220 PSU, private, foreign, small finance, cooperative banks, payment system providers etc are using UPI. The number of participating organisations was only 36 in January, 2017.