UPI transactions cross 100-billion mark in 2023

The per-day UPI transactions recorded in December numbered around 387 million (Representative Image)

Transactions through the unified payments interface (UPI) platform crossed the 100 billion-mark in calendar year 2023 to close at around 118 billion, as per the data shared by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).

This marks a 60 percent growth as compared to 74 billion UPI transactions recorded in 2022.

During August 2023, UPI had crossed the milestone of 10 billion transactions a month for the first time and continued to do so in the following months. In December, UPI recorded 12 billion transactions with a cumulative value of Rs 18.23 lakh crore.

The total value of UPI transactions in 2003 stood at around Rs 182 lakh crore, higher by 44 percent as compared to Rs 126 lakh crore in 2022.

The per-day UPI transactions recorded in December numbered around 387 million, as per the NPCI data.

UPI is expected to surpass Mastercard's daily transaction volume of 440 million sometime this year going by the 60 percent growth rate. Visa, the world's largest card network, processes an average of 750 million transactions per day.

While there are around 9.6 crore credit cards in India, the value of transactions on the platform is around Rs 1.6 lakh crore, which is less than a tenth of what UPI does in a month. There are more than 300 million UPI payment users in the country. Recently, Rupay credit cards which can be linked to UPI accounts have been gaining popularity among banks and users.

Notably, the technology stack architecture of NPCI - which runs the mobile payments system - allows for infinite scalability. The ability to think of the network effect of innovations also helps the organisation to bring out features that customers and its partners want the most.