ICICI Bank has 21 million virtual payment addresses (VPAs), which were generated on its mobile applications at the end of the quarter ended September 30, 2018 (Q2FY19). This is an increase of 5.6 million VPAs over last quarter, a percentage increase of 36%. The VPAs were created through iMobile (ICICI's mobile banking app), Pockets wallet (open to non-bank customers as well), and other partner platforms like Google Pay (earlier Tez) and Truecaller's UPI product Truecaller Pay. The bank did not disclose the number of merchants it acquired over its mobile payments application EazyPay in this quarter or the last. The last available number is for Q3FY18, when the bank said that it acquired 158,000 merchants through EazyPay. ICICI does not give information about the number of transactions it processes or the value of the transactions. It is also unclear how many VPAs are active at the moment. However, the number of merchants it acquires is significant as banks are allowed to charge merchants a higher fee than than P2P payments on the Unified Payment Interface (UPI). The merchant discount rate (MDR) — the fee borne by the seller to provide services — is 0.25% for payments below Rs 1,000 and 0.65% for all other charges. In this context, it is worth noting that UPI saw an increase of 32% in the total transaction volumes between July-August 2018. UPI transactions have been growing since launch, except in May and July; the number of transactions declined for the first time in May 2018. In July, the government withdrew multiple…
