February was a month of mixed results for the National Payments Corporation of India's (NPCI) flagship payments platform. While several payments platforms operated by the NPCI saw a marginal growth in transactions, others saw a marginal dip in transactions in February compared to January this year. Nonetheless, transactions on these platforms have grown significantly over the last year signifying the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic pushed people to use digital payments platforms. Transactions on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) platform have nearly doubled in value over the last year, while transactions on the Bharat Bill Payment System have more than doubled in the last year, reflecting a higher user base on both the consumer and merchant ends. On the other hand, platforms like FASTag and the Aadhaar Enabled System have seen a significant jump in transactions due to a push by the government, according to NPCI data. In fact, since January this year the NPCI has begun upgrading each of its payments platforms and its IT system in anticipation of a surge in transaction volumes going forward. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, digital payments adoption has increased significantly with several of NPCI’s platforms clocking historical highs every month. But this growth has been unsustainable as the underlying banking infrastructure has been overwhelmed by the surge in transaction volumes in the last few months. According to MediaNama’s calculations, based on NPCI data, the transaction failure rate on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) stood at 3.4% as of December…
