UPI Transactions Fall Monthly, Bring Decent Growth Annually
Mumbai: Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions dipped sightly in April but clocked decent annual growth.
UPI processed 17.89 billion transactions in April, down 2.2% from 18.30 billion in March. Transaction value fell 3.3% to Rs 23.95 lakh crore from Rs 24.77 lakh crore last month.
But on a yearly basis, UPI showed strong momentum. Transaction count surged 34%, while value jumped 22% compared to April last year.
According to NPCI, the average daily transaction count rose to 596 million in April, up from 590 million in March. Average daily value edged up to Rs 79,831 crore from Rs 79,910 crore.
FY25 started strong for UPI. Total value jumped 30% to Rs 260.56 lakh crore from Rs 199.96 lakh crore in FY24. Transaction volume rose 42% to 185.85 billion from 131.14 billion.
The dip in April was partly due to outages on apps like Google Pay, PhonePe, and Paytm between late March and mid-April, experts say.
FASTag payments also picked up pace. Daily FASTag volumes hit 12.75 million, up from 12.2 million in March. FASTag transaction value rose to Rs 227 crore from Rs 219 crore, marking a sharp 17% monthly jump.
IMPS daily transactions inched up to 14.98 million, from 14.89 million last month, showing steady growth across digital channels.
In a recent development, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has asked banks to immediately restrict the use of the 'Check Transaction' API for UPI payments.
This move follows a five-hour UPI outage on April 12, the longest in over three years.
In a circular dated April 26, NPCI stressed excessive status check calls by banks for overloading the system. These repeated checks were triggered when the banks failed to receive transaction status updates from beneficiary banks.
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