United Payments Interface (UPI), as of March 29, recorded transactions worth $1.09 trillion (or Rs 83.45 lakh crore) in FY22, far exceeding Rs 41 lakh crore reported in the previous year, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) said.
In March 2022, UPI breached the five billion or 500 crore mark for the number of transactions processed, NPCI‘s data showed.
UPI has been one of the biggest innovations in India’s financial sector and has fast become the preferred method of payment for many citizens.
Its astounding success is now studied in developed countries, and the NPCI is personally working with several governments around the world to help them implement UPI in their countries too.
In FY22, 60 percent of retail payments were done using UPI, although it is largely used only for low-ticket transactions. In terms of total transaction values in FY22, UPI accounted only for 16 percent — which means people mostly used UPI for small, low-priced purchases.
More than 50 percent of the transactions on UPI were less than Rs 200, NPCI data revealed.
Recently, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) directed the NPCI to launch UPI payments for feature phones for offline transactions. The RBI has been pushing for innovation in the offline transactions space, and launching UPI on these platforms could be a game-changer for payments in rural areas.
The NPCI said it has already begun work on launching UPI offline via UPI Lite. However, there will be a Rs 200 cap on these offline payments, and users can only load up these on-device, offline wallets with up to Rs 2,000.
NPCI said it hopes to achieve a run rate of a billion transactions a day in three to five years.
