Transactions via the Unified Payment Interface surged in March, partly driven by subscriptions for initial public offerings that opened during the month.
Value of transactions via the platform, launched in April 2016, rose to Rs 5.04 lakh crore last month compared with Rs 4.25 lakh crore in February.
While volumes have been rising steadily since the platform was introduced, the Covid-19 crisis gave an added push to digital transactions via UPI. For the full financial year 2020-21, the value of UPI transactions stood at Rs 34.19 lakh crore.
A large share of the UPI transactions still come from peer-to-peer transfers even though peer-to-merchant payments via the platform have also picked up. As of February, the latest data available, P2P payments made up 83% of total payments. Data for March is not yet available.
There have also been concerns of concentration risk with two large platforms dominating UPI transfers. In February, Phone Pe accounted for 44% and Google Pay accounted for 40% of total volumes on the UPI platform. To address this risk, the National Payments Corporation of India has introduced caps on market share at 30% of total volumes.
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