Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: In a significant development, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) crossed 20 billion transactions in August for the first time in its history, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) data showed on September 1. In August, UPI transactions reached 20.01 billion mark, registering a 2.8 per cent increase over July (19.47 billion). On the annual basis, this is a 34 per cent increase. In terms of value, UPI recorded transactions worth Rs 24.85 lakh crore during August, up 24 per cent on-year, the data showed.
Moreover, the average daily transaction count jumped to 645 million (up from 628 million in July), and the daily transaction value stood at Rs 80,177 crore, as per the NPCI data. UPI had earlier achieved a record of crossing 700 million transactions in a single day on August 2. This milestone comes on the back of steady growth over the past few months. The surge in August came despite the ban on real money gaming platforms.
In June, UPI clocked 18.40 billion transactions worth Rs 24.04 lakh crore. The following month, it saw a sharp rise to 19.47 billion transactions, a 5.8 per cent increase from June, with the transaction value climbing to Rs 25.08 lakh crore. According to a latest SBI Research, Maharashtra emerged as the consistent leader in digital payments with 9.8 per cent share in July alone, followed by Karnataka (5.5 per cent) and Uttar Pradesh (5.3 per cent).
