The Unified Payment Interface (UPI) saw an increased of 39% in the total transaction volumes taking place between November and December 2017, according to data published by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). The NPCI is a company owned by Indian banks and owns and operates payments systems such as UPI and IMPS.

The total number of transactions in December were around 32.5 times higher than they were at the end of January 2017. The amount transacted increased by 36% to Rs 13,144 crores over November 2017. The amount transacted in December 2017 was 7.7 times higher than what it was in January 2017. In December, the number of transactions and amount transacted occurred per day as a result both were at their highest peak.

Some observations:

1. UPI transactions have been growing since launch. There appears to have been a hockey-stick effect that has taken place in the last three months. Note that Google Tez launched on September 18th, and has reported 140 million transactions for the month of October and November since launch, apart from 12 million users. Note that the chart above shows a slight dip in February. However, if you look at UPI transactions on a per day basis for each month, there has been a continuous increase, as indicated in the chart below.

However, the increase in the number of transactions should be taken with a pinch of salt as PhonePe CEO Sameer Nigam pointed out that these are artificial as most new users are only doing P2P transactions worth Rs 1 in hopes of getting a cashback in their accounts.

 

2. The number of transactions grew by 40.6 million in December 2017 whereas the total amount transacted increased by Rs 3,503 crores. In November 2017, volume had increased by 28 million and amount transacted had grown Rs 2,582.8 crores.

3. The average amount per transaction declined to Rs 904 for December 2017, it has been trending down, with an increase in the number of transactions. Even then, it has been remained above of Rs 800 mark.

4. The number of banks on UPI increased to 67 in December 2017.