Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions soared beyond the 100 billion milestone in the calendar year 2023, reaching approximately 118 billion, according to data released by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). The recorded figure reflects a substantial 60% increase compared to the 74 billion UPI transactions documented in the previous year, 2022.
August 2023 witnessed UPI achieving the groundbreaking milestone of 10 billion transactions per month for the first time, maintaining this momentum in the subsequent months. By December, UPI registered an impressive 12 billion transactions, amounting to a cumulative value of Rs 18.23 lakh crore.
The total value of UPI transactions in 2023 stood at approximately Rs 182 lakh crore, marking a notable 44% surge compared to Rs 126 lakh crore in 2022. NPCI data for December reveals a daily average of around 387 million UPI transactions.
With a growth rate of 60%, UPI is poised to surpass Mastercard's daily transaction volume of 440 million sometime in the current year. Visa, the world's largest card network, processes an average of 750 million transactions per day.
Despite having around 9.6 crore credit cards in India, the transaction value on this platform is approximately Rs 1.6 lakh crore, less than a tenth of the monthly UPI transactions. The number of UPI payment users in the country has exceeded 300 million, with Rupay credit cards gaining popularity, linked to UPI accounts.
Noteworthy is the infinite scalability of NPCI's technology stack architecture, enabling the mobile payments system to adapt and grow seamlessly. This scalability, combined with the ability to understand the network effect of innovations, empowers the organization to introduce features that resonate most with customers and partners.
