India recorded about 131 billion UPI transactions in FY24, says finance minister

India recorded about 131 billion Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions with a total value of ₹200 trillion in FY24, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Monday. In FY23, about 83.7 crore transactions worth ₹139 trillion were conducted through UPI, according to data from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which runs UPI.

Addressing the 'Viksit Bharat Ambassador' event at GITAM in Visakhapatnam, Sitharaman said Indians have been adopting the digital payments technology even in rural areas. "Ordinary citizens of India are doing these kinds of (UPI) transactions. These are not just Adanis and Ambanis, they are ordinary sellers," Sitharaman said.

As things stand, PhonePe (48.3%) and Google Pay (37.6%) have a nearly 86% share of the UPI market by volume (number of transactions), according to NPCI data. Paytm Payments Bank, which is a distant third, saw its market share fall after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) imposed restrictions on it in January. The next two, Cred and the Axis Bank app, have a market share of less than 1% each.

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Sitharaman also said that while the government has set a target of making India a developed nation by 2047, it will become the third-largest economy in the coming years. "India has come to the fifth rank and a visionary prime minister who will make sure that corruption doesn't eat into the goodwill and the earnings of the common people. Because when corruption happens, it is your money, my money and others' monies which are going into some black hole," she said.  

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"Therefore, there is a guarantee being given by Prime Minister Modi that with good administration, clean administration, he will ensure that India will reach the third rank. It is not an arithmetic inevitability," she added.

The FM was responding to a statement by former finance minister P Chidambaram, who said that India will become the world's third-largest economy no matter who is prime minister. He said India would achieve the feat given the size of its population, and there was "no magic" involved in it.

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