UPI achieves big milestone! Crosses 200 cr transactions in Oct, value nears Rs 4 lakh crore

In a first, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) crossed a big milestone in October, registering 207 crore transactions against 114.83 crore done last year during the same period -- an 80 per cent rise.

The transaction value has also jumped 101 per cent from Rs 1.91 lakh crore in October 2019 to Rs 3.86 lakh crore in October 2020.

According to the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), an umbrella organisation for operating retail payments and settlement systems in India, UPI witnessed 180 crore transactions worth Rs 3.29 lakh crore in September.

"BHIM UPI has managed to change the face of person-to-person and person-to-merchant money transfers in the past few years while making them safer and more secure," NPCI said in a tweet.

During the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak and lockdown, the UPI transactions witnessed a faster volume growth as people tried to avoid cash. It took only eight months for volume to grow 74.6 crore from 130 crore transactions in February to 207 crore in October.

Before COVID-19, similar volume growth took 14 months to reach the 130 crore-mark in February this year from 62 crore transactions in December 2018.  Launched in April 2016, the UPI's transactions in volume terms stood at 90,000, while the value was Rs 38 lakh. At present,  189 banks are live on UPI.

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