The Unified Payment Interface (UPI) saw a decrease of 2.2% in the total transaction volumes taking place between March 2019 and April 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 April 2019 was around 4 times higher than in the same month last year. The amount transacted went up by 6.4% to Rs 142,034.4 crores over March. The amount transacted in April 2019 was 5.3 times higher than in April 2018. Some observations 1. Although the amount transacted increased this April 2019, the number of transactions fell for the first time to 27.92 crore transactions per day from 28.55 crore transactions in March 2019. 2. The number of transactions declined by 17.8 million in April whereas the total amount transacted increased by Rs 8,573.7 crores. In March 2019, volume had increased by 125.4 million and the amount transacted had raised by Rs 26,723.6 crores, but there was still growth on a per day basis. 3. The average amount per transaction grew to Rs 1,817 for April 2019 with a decrease in the amount transacted. It has been mostly flat since October 2018. The average amount per transaction has remained above the Rs 1,000 mark for the last 11 months. 4. The number of banks on UPI jumped to 144 in April 2019.
