UPI transactions cross Rs 5 lakh crore in March on digital payments surge

BENGALURU:  Homegrown digital payments innovation United Payments Interface (UPI) has processed Rs 5.04 lakh crore in transaction value an all time high during March 2021, showed data shared by regulator National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). This is a 18 per cent rise from Rs 4.25 lakh crore in February. 

In terms of volume, UPI has seen transactions on its platform more than double to 2.73 billion when compared to 1.25 billion in March 2020. Also, UPI transactions have jumped by 20 per cent from 2.29 billion in February.

For the financial year 2020-21, total transaction value on its network stood 
at Rs 34.19 lakh crore.

When it comes to UPI payments, PhonePe, and Google Pay, have the lion’s share.  

Walmart owned PhonePe, which owns over 40 per cent of the UPI market share, said it has clocked 1.3 billion UPI transactions in March led by digitisation of small brick and mortar stores in tier 2, 3 cities.

Rival Google Pay followed with a 40 per cent of the UPI market share even as the tech giant has been criticised for various instances of failed end-to-end transactions for the past few months.

Other players like Paytm, Amazon Pay, Whatsapp Pay clocked the 20 per cent of the total UPI market share. 

In order to prevent market monopoly, the payments regulator had earlier announced capping UPI transactions at  30 per cent of total volumes for each third party application.

This is particularly aimed to provide a level-playing field to smaller players in the segment.

Sources, however, said that the top executives at Phone Pe, Google Pay have expressed their displeasure with NPCI’s decision.

Earlier, the government directed the UPI platforms and banks not to levy charges from merchants (merchant discount rate) for providing payments infrastructure POS machines.