The Unified Payment Interface (UPI) saw an increase of 8.5% in the total transaction volumes taking place between December 2018 and January 2019, according to data published by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). The NPCI is a private company owned by Indian banks and owns and operates payments systems such as UPI and IMPS. The total number of transactions in January 2019 was around 4.4 times higher than in the same month last year. The amount transacted increased by 7.2% to Rs 109,932.4 crores over December 2018. The amount transacted in January 2019 was 7 times higher than in the corresponding month last year. Some observations: 1. UPI transactions have been growing since launch, except May and July 2018. Growth has typically been driven by new launches and cashbacks: Google Tez launched on September 18, 2017, gave cashbacks, and reported 140 million transactions for the month of October and November 2017 since launch, with 12 million users. The growth in October and December 2018 can’t be attributed to any particular service launch. 2. The number of transactions grew by 52.6 million in January whereas the total amount transacted increased by Rs 7,337.6 crores. In December 2018, volume had increased by 95.2 million and amount transacted had grown by Rs 20,362.6 crores. 3. The average amount per transaction decreased marginally to Rs 1,634 for January 2019 with an increase in the number of transactions. It has been trending down, with an increase in the transaction. It has remained above…
