India / UPI will surpass Visa, MasterCard in next 3 years: NITI Aayog CEO

New Delhi: UPI transactions in India have ballooned over the last two years, giving a strong boost to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Digital India’ mission. The volume of UPI transactions shot up by nearly 13 times while the value of transactions skyrocketed by around 20 times during FY18 and FY20, according to the Reserve Bank of India. Speaking about the leapfrogging digital payments in India, Amitabh Kant, CEO, Niti Aayog today said in a tweet that UPI with 18 billion transactions annually has surpassed Amex at 8 billion. Amex, Visa, and Mastercard are all decades old, but a five-year old UPI has overtaken Amex and will definitely surpass Visa and Mastercard over the course of the next 3 years, he added.

In FY18, the volume of UPI transactions was 91.52 crore, which rose to 539.2 crore in FY19, and further shot up to 1,252 crore in FY20. Consequently, the value involved in such transactions was Rs 1.09 lakh crore in FY18, Rs 8.77 lakh crore in FY19, and Rs 21.32 lakh crore in FY20. Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is a system that powers multiple bank accounts into a single mobile application, which is used for immediate money transfer through mobile devices round the clock and 365 days. PhonePe, Google Pay, BHIM, etc are the mobile platforms that are facilitating customers to transfer money on a real-time basis.

Meanwhile, UPI mode of payment became popular in India after demonetisation in November 2016. While the notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 became obsolete, people were left with no other option than using digital payments. Gradually, they got habituated and the convenience in using UPI pushed its growth in the Indian market. Single click two-factor authentication; universal application for the transaction; leveraging existing infrastructure; safer, secured, and innovative way of transactions; and seamless merchant transactions are some of the benefits of UPI.