Unified Payment Interface (UPI) payment volumes increased by 11.2% to 1.8 billion in September 2020 over the previous month, per data published by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). For the same period, amount transacted via UPI increased by 10.3% to over ~₹329,000 crore. NPCI is a private company owned by Indian banks; it owns and operates important payments systems such as UPI and IMPS.
Transactions volumes in September were 1.9x YoY, with total amount transacted increasing 2x YoY to The ₹329,027 crore. This steep increase comes after a drastic slump in both metrics in April, given the nationwide lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Key observations
1. Increase over August: The number of transactions increased by 181.3 million in September, whereas the total amount transacted went up by Rs 30,720 crores. In the previous month (August 2020), volume had increased by 121.5 million and the amount transacted grew by Rs 7,769.8 crores.
2. Average transactions per day: Around 60 million transactions were completed and ₹10,967 crore was transacted on an average per day in September. Average transactions per day in September is the highest amount till date.
3. Size of transaction: The average amount exchanged per transaction decreased marginally over the previous month to ₹1,828. However, this is a 8% YoY increase from ₹1,691 in September 2019. Average amount per transacted fell to its lowest in the past one year in April 2020, to ₹1,521.
4. Banks on UPI: Six more banks onboarded UPI payments in September 2020, now totaling to 174 banks. Since September 2019, over a 12-month period, 33 banks have been added. 26 of which have been added since March 2020. The nationwide lockdown for coronavirus began at the fag-end of March, and lasted till mid-May after which relaxations have gradually come into place. It’s possible that more banks began UPI payments as unprecedented immobility, along with need to limit human contact, meant a natural move to digital payments.
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Edited by Trisha Jalan
