Three years after its launch, India’s own domestic payments platform, Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has hit a new record high as the transactions using the app has reached one billion in October. Its ever-rising popularity can be gauged from the fact that the UPI also recently crossed 100 million users.
Buoyed by the results, National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which operates the UPI platform, is now aiming to go a step further and take it global. NPCI is planning to do so by by enabling acceptance of UPI in Singapore and the UAE.
“The UPI has had the fastest acceptance not just in payments but among other platforms as well. I have not compared the numbers but given the time taken to reach 100 million users by social media and other platforms. I am sure we should be among the top,” said Dilip Asbe, chief executive officer, NPCI.
UPI being an instant, real-time payments system has pretty much become one of the most preferred payment modes today owing to its simple, safe, and hassle-free system.
The payments system allows users to transfer money across 24×7 across multiple bank accounts, without putting out details of the beneficiary’s bank account. At present, 141 banks are live on UPI, compared with 21 banks when the payments system was launched three years ago.
The system was developed by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) backed NPCI, an umbrella organisation for all retail payments in the country. According to the RBI annual report, the number of transactions via UPI was 1.2 times higher the number of debit card transactions in 2018-19.
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