UPI has become an integral part of our daily life for making online payments to merchants, paying utility bills, renewing insurance policies, and more. You will hardly find any person that doesn’t accept UPI payments in India. UPI payments are accepted by online stores, e-commerce merchants, grocery stores, shopping malls, online betting sites, and more. In fact, betting sites that use UPI have become more and more popular as it is very easy now to bet on your favourite sports using the UPI payment method. You can easily pay using UPI apps like Google Pay, PhonePe, or PayTM. Since there are no transaction charges, you can save the transaction fee as well.

Recently, NPCI announced that there were 3.65 billion UPI transactions made in September 2021 amounting to a total of Rs 6.54 trillion. This is indeed a new record in terms of transactions and the total amount. This is the 3rd consecutive month when UPI has crossed 3 billion transactions in a month. This is good news for the Indian government as the cashless economy is speeding up with UPI payments.

UPI Transactions since the Pandemic

UPI Payments witnessed a huge surge since the pandemic hit India in March 2020. While people were not able to go out, the only logical way was to pay online and get the items delivered at the doorstep. In fact, the e-commerce sites like Amazon and Flipkart stopped the cash on delivery to prevent any covid spread with the exchange of currency notes. Thus, UPI transactions increased manifold and people also got used to it in a positive way.

Talking about numbers, the number of transactions in September has grown by 3% on a month to month (MoM) basis. Also, the total transacted amount has increased by 2.3%. Astonishingly, the number of transactions and the total amount have doubled on a year to year (YoY) basis.

July 2021 had a total of 3.24 billion transactions of 6.06 trillion followed by 3.55 billion transactions in Aug 2021. Analysts are expecting this to grow further in the coming months owing to the festive season of Diwali and Dussehra.

This year alone, a total of 25.7 billion UPI transactions have been completed with a total worth of Rs 50 trillion.

History of UPI in India


UPI came into existence on 11 April 2016 in India. It is a single payment system where the bank account is linked with the UPI mobile app using the registered mobile number. This is known as a peer to peer transaction. It was initially launched with 21 banks at RBI Headquarters in Mumbai. Since then, UPI has come a long way in 5 years. Now there are a total of 235 banks in India accepting UPI.

In October 2019, it was the first time that UPI crossed 1 billion transactions in India. Then again, in October 2020, UPI crossed more than 2 billion transactions. The next target of 3 billion transactions happened in the next 10 months itself.

How UPI Became so Popular?

With the advancement in technology, people were tired of remembering their 16 digit debit or credit card numbers. In fact, sharing the bank account number or personal financial details led to several online frauds in the past. This is where UPI comes to the rescue.

Now you don’t need to share your bank account number to send or receive payments. Moreover, no need to remember long credit or debit card numbers. UPI is directly linked with your bank account and registered mobile number. Thus, you can easily send payments to anyone by scanning their barcode, entering their mobile number, or using their UPI virtual payment address.

This way, not only your payments are 100% safe and secure, but the transaction also happens instantly. It works 24/7 and you can use it anytime anywhere.

So, here are the benefits of using UPI.
  • The fastest way for online payments
  • Cheapest method for payments with zero transaction fee
  • You can pay even a small amount like Rs1 to someone
  • Complete privacy as you don’t have to share the bank account number
  • Get Cashback and Rewards for paying merchants online

Conclusion

Gone are the days when you had to stand in a long bank queue to transfer money. UPI has changed it all and now you can make online payments to anyone sitting at the comfort of your home. This is the reason why billions of UPI transactions are happening every month in India.

UPI has become so popular in India that now the banks are also offering their own UPI payment apps to their customers. So, apart from the major UPI apps like Google Pay, PhonePe, or PayTM, one can also use their bank’s UPI app for making online transactions. Certainly, UPI has helped to make online transactions hassle-free for everyone, be it small tea stalls or big shopping malls. Anyone can use UPI with zero transaction charges.
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