UPI to account for 90% of retail digital transactions in next 5 years, says RBI bulletin

Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is expected to account for 90 percent of retail digital transactions volume in the next five years, said the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) bulletin. It will be up from 75.6 per cent in 2022-23, said the central bank.

“The UPI is expected to account for 90 per cent share of retail digital transactions volume in the next five years, up from 75.6 per cent in 2022-23,” said RBI.

Unified Payments Interface (UPI) hit record 9 billion transactions in May this year. The total value of UPI transactions for May touched ₹14.3 trillion, according to National Payments Corporation of India’s (NPCI).

The payment infrastructure recorded 8.89 billion transactions in April worth ₹14.07 trillion, 8.7 billion transactions in March worth ₹14.05 trillion.

The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) achieved a milestone of 9.4 billion transactions, with a 143 per cent growth (y-o-y) in successful transactions under the UPI Autopay feature and a 23 per cent rise (y-o-y) in new mandate registrations, said the central bank in its bulletin.

The  growth in payments was reinforced by a rapid scaling up of the payment acceptance infrastructure. 

The proliferation of UPI quick response(QR) codes, up by 44 per cent year-on-year and point-of-sale (PoS) devices, rose by 27 per cent on a yearly basis continued to provide consumers and merchants with cost-effective and expeditious payment options.

Furthermore, person-to-merchant (P2M) payments have gained prominence, comprising 57 per cent of the total transaction volume through the UPI.

"With the linking of Rupay credit cards to UPI, the share of P2M transactions in value terms is also anticipated to rise, owing to a higher average ticket size of credit card purchases than UPI," it said.

The bulletin stated that the number of toll plazas processing more than 90 per cent of transactions in under 2 minutes (through NETC FASTags) increased by 70 per cent,