Digital payments continued its upward trajectory in December with transactions on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) breaching the ₹4-lakh crore mark in terms of value.
The rise in digital payments comes at a time of improving economic activity and sentiment as well as the continued festive season spends at the year-end.
Data released by the National Payments Corporation of India on Friday revealed that transactions on the UPI platform amounted to ₹4,16,176.21 crore in December with a total of 223.41 crore payments processed. There were 207 banks live on the UPI platform.
In contrast, 221.02 crore transactions worth ₹3.9-lakh crore were processed on UPI in November 2020.
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Meanwhile, transactions on the Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) rose to 35.56 crore amounting to ₹2.92-lakh crore in December. This was higher than the 33.91 crore payments worth ₹2.76-lakh crore processed on IMPS in November.
“Ten years of providing instant settlements has helped IMPS assure you of a safer and more convenient new year,” NPCI said in a tweet.
Bharat BillPay processed 2.62 crore transactions amounting to ₹3,962.76 crore in December compared to 2.39 crore payments of ₹3,713.21 crore in November.
Similarly, FASTag also registered record high payments with 13.84 crore transactions worth ₹2,303.79 crore in December. Transactions on NETC FASTag had amounted to 12.48 crore worth ₹2,102.02 crore in November.
With mandatory implementation of FASTag from this month, it is likely to see further growth in transactions.
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Significantly, the number of transactions on the Aadhaar-enabled Payment System (AePS), which plays a key role in direct benefit transfers, stood at 7.25 crore in December from 6.95 crore in November. The value of transactions also rose to ₹19,919.21 crore last month from ₹19,055.09 crore in November.
The Reserve Bank of India, in its Report on Trend and Progress of Banking in India 2019-20, noted that social distancing requirements during the pandemic led to the digital mode of transactions being preferred over cash, although the value and volume of the former were somewhat depressed on account of the slowdown in economic activity ahead of the outbreak.
“The trajectory of growth in UPI-based transactions as well as overall retail digital transactions has been impressive, both in value and volume terms,”it further noted.