UPI registers 300 million monthly transactions, Paytm sees 290 billion transactions

National Payments Corporation of India's (NPCI) bank-to-bank account settlement system Unified Payments Interface (UPI) crossed 300 million transactions in August. It is an increase of 32% from July when it clocked 235.6 million transactions.

It is also a significant increase from last September's 30 million transactions and Rs 5,293 crore of money transfer. In August this year, along with their 300 million milestone, there has also been money transfer of about Rs 54,000 crore.

Average transaction size in August was Rs 1,800, which is similar to previous months. Unlike the Immediate Payment Service (IMPS), a real-time bank-to-bank fund transfer, users use UPI to transfer smaller amounts. The average size of IMPS transactions for Indian customers is Rs 10,000, as mentioned by the RBI.

According to a report in The Economic Times, bankers said that the jump in transactions was driven by wider adoption and users repeatedly choosing to use UPI for their payments activities.

Google is also utilising UPI's increased traction and has been using the framework for all its payments in India. Along with Google, Flipkart-owned PhonePe and Paytm are also leveraging UPI and offering cashbacks to bring in more customers.

Paytm gets more traction

Additionally, digital payments company, Paytm handled 290 billion transactions in August across its verticals. The app currently has 92 million users. The company also said that they have been registering more than 1 billion monthly sessions of users logging in and using the app for payments and money transfers. As mentioned in the daily, Senior Vice President Deepak Abbot said that they have also been introducing new use cases like apartment maintenance payments, municipal payments, donations, insurance and toll.   

Offline transactions for the app have also witnessed a strong growth. Driven by Paytm's strategy of installing QR codes at merchant outlets, the company onboarded 8.5 million offline merchants and receives more than 30,000 requests for integration every day.

Abbot also said that the company has also witnessed huge traction for money transfers between peers. He added that Paytm will continue to add more convenient payment solutions.

(Edited by Anwesha Madhukalya)