UPI will surpass Visa, MasterCard in next 3 years: NITI Aayog's Amitabh Kant

Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog, on Wednesday said that the 5-year old digital payment product UPI would soon overtake global majors such as Visa and MasterCard as a preferred mode of payment.

"Leapfrogging Digital Payments in India: UPI with 18 Billion transactions annually has surpassed Amex at 8 Billion. Amex, Visa and MasterCard are all decades old, but a 5 year old UPI has overtaken Amex & will definitely surpass Visa & MasterCard over the course of the next 3 years," Kant tweeted.

Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is an instant real-time payment system developed by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) facilitating inter-bank transactions.

The number of payments transacted on UPI hit an all-time high of 149 crore (1.49 billion) in July this year, with the value of transactions reaching Rs 2.91 lakh crore, NPCI data showed. The previous high was 134 crore (1.34 billion) transactions in the preceding month of June, while the value of transactions was Rs 2.61 lakh crore, as per the data from the NPCI.

In July 2019, the number of UPI transactions stood at 82.23 crore, with cumulative value of Rs 1.46 lakh crore. During the April-July period of 2020-21, the cumulative transactions on UPI reached 631 crore. The value transacted stood at Rs 6.31 lakh crore.

Meanwhile, NPCI recently launched its international arm -- NPCI International Payments Ltd -- to expand real-time payment system UPI and card payment network RuPay in other nations as well. "NIPL is tasked with the responsibility of exporting NPCI's indigenously developed offerings and technological acumen to foreign markets, thereby revolutionising the global payments landscape. The primary focus of NIPL would be internationalisation of RuPay and UPI, along with a few more offerings of NPCI," an official statement said.

Also read: Paytm a distant third behind Google Pay, PhonePe in UPI payments

Also read: UPI transactions hit a new high of 149 crore in July