In Few Months, RBI Anticipates that Daily UPI Transactions Would Reach 1 billion

Nitin Konde, Varun Bhardwaj

Oct 30, 2024 — 2 min read

RBI Predicts UPI Daily Transactions to Hit 1 Billion Soon

According to Governor Shaktikanta Das, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) anticipates that the number of daily Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions will surpass one billion in the coming months from the current 500 million transactions per day.

Das stated during a panel discussion at the Group of Thirty's Annual International Banking Seminar in Washington, DC, on October 26, 2024, that the RBI will not make a hasty announcement about a nationwide rollout of the central bank of digital currency (CBDC) because it wants to carry out extensive testing and be completely certain about its design, robustness, and security before thinking about a wider rollout.

The payments system is now much more efficient thanks to UPI. Approximately 500 million transactions are made over UPI every day. "We are trying to step it up further and the idea is to reach a billion transactions, may be in the next few months," Das stated.

What National Payments Corporation of India’s Data Reveals?

According to data from the National Payments Corporation of India, the average number of transactions per day increased from 483 million in August to above 500 million in September. UPI handled 15.04 billion transactions in September 2024, totalling INR 20.64 lakh crore.

The RBI is working to integrate UPI with more nations' payment systems. In fact, UPI has a lot of potential for international payments. According to Das, the RBI has also taken the initiative to connect India's UPI with other nations' quick payment systems.

Seven Countries Using UPI For Transactions

Seven nations presently provide UPI: France, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, and Nepal.

Regarding the e-rupee, the governor stated that the RBI will implement the CBDC nationwide in a phased manner. Cross-border payments represent the CBDC's greatest potential. Through the removal of numerous middlemen, CBDC can enable quick, easy, and inexpensive cross-border money transactions.

On November 1, 2022, the RBI began the first CBDC trial phase for wholesale transactions of government securities. A month later, on December 1, the RBI began the pilot for retail transactions.

Current Performance of UPI in India

PhonePe is the most popular UPI app in terms of volume and value contribution, followed by Google Pay and Paytm. However, according to a report by payment technology service provider Worldline, the average ticket size (ATS) of UPI transactions decreased by 8%. According to the report, the average ticket size (ATS) for all UPI transactions was INR 1,603 in the first half of 2023 and fell to INR 1,478 in the first half of 2024.

P2P (person-to-person) and P2M (person-to-merchant) transactions make up ATS. In P2P transactions, ATS saw an almost constant increase from INR 2,812 to INR 2,836 year over year. The amount of ATS for P2M transactions decreased by 4%, from INR 667 to INR 643.