India's UPI broke China's pride and became everyone's favorite in the world

UPI Transactions / India's UPI broke China's pride and became everyone's favorite in the world

UPI Transactions - India's UPI broke China's pride and became everyone's favorite in the world

UPI Transactions: India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has now become a leading player among global payment systems. Between April and July this year, UPI processed transactions worth Rs 80.8 lakh crore ($964 billion), a 37% year-on-year growth. UPI overtook platforms such as China's Alipay and Brazil's PIX by processing 3729.1 transactions per second in 2023. In July 2024, UPI recorded transactions worth Rs 20.64 lakh crore ($247 billion), the highest ever. This growth reflects India's rapid progress towards digital payments, and UPI's potential is likely to grow even further in the future.

Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which has emerged as the world's most popular alternative payment system, processed transactions worth Rs 80.8 lakh crore or $964 billion in April-July 2024, showing a growth of 37 per cent year-on-year compared to the same period last year. Let us also tell you what kind of figures of UPI transactions have come out all over the world.

Left China and Brazil behind

According to global payment center PaySecure, UPI processed an astonishing 3729.1 transactions per second with 117.6 billion transactions on the platform in 2023, which is the highest in the world. UPI surpassed global payment platforms like China's Alipay, Paypal and Brazil's PIX in terms of transaction numbers. The 3729.1 transactions per second in 2023 are 58 per cent higher than the 2348 transactions per second registered in 2022. The value of transactions done on the platform during 2023 was $2.19 trillion.

In July this year, transactions on UPI totaled Rs 20.64 lakh crore or about $247 billion, which is the highest ever transaction achieved by the platform during a month. The value of processed transactions has now remained above Rs 20 lakh crore for three consecutive months.

Most countries use some form of APM along with central banks to create real-time payment options for customers. This has allowed a large number of people to make online payments and transfer money. Recently, the PaySecure team examined 40 top alternative payment methods around the world to find out how many transactions they processed every second.

Expansion of UPI and future prospects

PaySecure informed that the APM in which the most transactions took place in our report was the Unified Payment Interface. India leads the world in digital transactions, more than 40 percent of payments are made digitally, and UPI is used for most of them.

NPST co-founder and CEO Deepak Chand Thakur says in a media report that we are adding more channels to UPI. Therefore, the ability to transact on different platforms has increased. He said that although UPI started as an easy transaction tool, they have now also added credit cards, prepaid wallets and prepaid vouchers to this ecosystem.

According to Thakur, from 300 million users, UPI now has more than 400 million users. Earlier transactions were being done only through bank accounts. But now interoperability has increased a lot. He says that the increase in transaction channels has made UPI the most popular payment platform.

Rahul Jain, Chief Financial Officer, NTT Data Payments Services India, says that in the next 2-3 years, UPI's growth will double in both value and volume. There is a reason for this. The platform is constantly launching its new products. About 300 million people who have smartphones are still not using UPI for payments. So, the potential is huge. RuPay Credit Card (Virtual Credit Card) and the newly launched credit line on UPI will further accelerate growth.

APM around the world

APM is a payment made without using a bank's debit, credit card or cash. APM has gained a lot of popularity in the last few years due to its convenience without heavy charges. APM includes real-time payment options like UPI, digital wallet, mobile payment, online banking, voucher-based payment and buy now pay later.

According to the data, Skrill, a digital wallet used in more than 100 countries, ranks second in the number of APM transactions in the world with 49 billion transactions or 1553.8 transactions per second in 2023. PIX, a real-time payment system similar to UPI, developed by the Central Bank of Brazil, ranked third with 42 billion transactions or 1331.8 transactions per second. China's popular digital wallet Alipay came in fourth with 36.5 billion transactions or 1157.4 transactions per second.

When was UPI started

UPI is a real-time payment system developed by the National Payment Corporation of India that allows users to transfer funds instantly. It is regulated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and has been in use since 2016. According to PaySecure, almost every country uses some form of alternative payment, with many central banks also developing their own real-time payment options to give more citizens the ability to make payments and transfer funds online.