“India has around 10 million point-of-sale devices,” said Tapesh Bhatnagar. “But it has nearly 300 million QR codes.” They are ubiquitous, pointing to how important person-to-merchant (P2M) payments are, in addition to P2P transfers. Bhatnagar stressed the free nature of these transactions: there is no charge to the user, and no charge to the merchant from their bank. Moreover, it is all in real time.
For many Indians, apps like BHIM, Paytm, Google Pay, and PhonePe are their portals to the ongoing digital transformation. Appreciation for the positive change being made can be gauged from the fact that UPI apps are now accepted for payment in countries beyond India’s borders, including the UAE, Singapore, France, and others.
Regulatory support from the government, continuing technical interventions from the NPCI, and innovative solutions from a growing network of payment service providers have whetted the appetite of the public. COVID’s restrictions obviously fed demand for contactless payment, but the market hasn’t reverted to old ways as the pandemic has receded. There are about 50 million merchants and 260 million distinct UPI users in the country.3 UPI processed over $1 trillion in digital transactions in 2022, a third of India’s entire GDP.4
UPI recorded over 12 billion transactions in December 2023 alone.5 According to Dilip Asbe, CEO and MD of NPCI, India has the potential to clock 100 billion transactions per day.6
