“Source: Livemint”
National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) expects the user base of real-time payment system Unified Payments Interface (UPI) to expand fivefold to 500 million in the next three years, chief executive officer Dilip Asbe said.
“UPI has recently crossed 100 million users, making it one of the fastest adoptions of any payments system anywhere in the world. NPCI’s objective for the next three years is to expand the UPI user base to 500 million,” Asbe said in an interview. The UPI was developed by NPCI, which is backed by the Reserve Bank of India.
While NPCI will release official data for payments transactions—by value and volume—on November 1, it is learnt from where that UPI transactions hit a new record of nearly 1 billion in October. As much as 955.02 million transactions worth ₹1.61 trillion were clocked during September, against 93,000 transactions worth ₹3.1 crore when it was launched three years ago in August 2016.
“It is encouraging to witness digital payments being widely accepted across the country. UPI’s integration with third-party apps and bank support has provided impetus to P2P (peer-to-peer) as well as P2M (person-to- merchant) electronic payments which resulted in this momentous achievement,” Asbe said, adding that in the next two years, the merchant ecosystem will get digitized.
The popularity of UPI can be attributed to its simple, safe and hassle-free system. UPI allows users to transfer money any time across multiple bank accounts, without putting out details of the beneficiary’s bank account.
Amid the government’s aggressive push towards boosting digital payments in the country, National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) expects real-time payment system Unified Payments Interface’s (UPI’s) user base to expand five times in the next three years to 500 million, NPCI chief executive officer Dilip Asbe said.
“UPI has recently crossed 100 million users, making it one of the fastest adoption of any payments system anywhere in the world. NPCI’s objective for the next three years is to expand the UPI user base to 500 million,” Asbe told Mint.
The payments system, that has given other digital payment modes such as wallets, debit cards, credit cards, run for their money, was developed by Reserve Bank of India (RBI) backed NPCI.
While NPCI will release official data for payments transactions—value and volume–on November 1, it is learnt that UPI transactions have hit a new record of 1 billion in October. As much as 955.02 million transactions worth Rs1.61 trillion were clocked during September, as compared with 93,000 transactions worth Rs3.1 crore when it was launched three years ago in August 2016.
“It is encouraging to witness digital payments being widely accepted across the country. UPI’s integration with third-party apps and banks support has provided impetus to P2P (peer-to-peer) as well as P2M (person-to-merchant) electronic payments which resulted in this momentous achievement,” Asbe said, adding that in the next two years, the merchant ecosystem will get digitized with the number of QR codes set to treble to 30 million.
The rising popularity of UPI can be attributed to its simple, safe, and hassle free system. UPI is a real-time payments system that allows users to transfer money across 24×7 across multiple bank accounts, without putting out details of the beneficiary’s bank account.
Based on the recommendations of the Nandan Nilekani-headed panel report on ‘deepening of digital payments’, NPCI plans to take UPI network global.
“We expect collaboration between fintechs and banks to drive the acceptance abroad. Our focus will always remain on enhancing acceptance infrastructure for digital payments so as to encourage customers towards digital transactions to achieve RBI and government’s less cash objective and facilitate faster adoption of UPI,” he said.