UPI transactions surpass 2-billion mark in October

Unified Payments Interface (UPI), the flagship payments platform of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), recorded over two billion transactions in October, a milestone that highlights the faster adoption of digital payments in a post-Covid-19 world.

The transactions, which had crossed the one-billion mark in the first 15 days of the month, amounted to Rs 3.86 trillion in October.

The NPCI data shows UPI registered 2.07 billion transactions, almost 82 per cent higher than the 1.14 billion transactions reported in the corresponding month last year.

Launched in 2016, it had crossed 1 billion transactions for the first time in October 2019. While it took UPI three years to reach a billion transactions in a month, the next billion came in just a year.

UPI has rebounded sharply from its fall in April, when it recorded 0.99 billion transactions as the pandemic-induced lockdown forced people to cut spending. Since then, transactions have more than doubled, despite the economy witnessing a contraction in the first quarter.