UPI was most preferred payment mode in 2019; YoY increase 188%

New Delhi: Unified Payments Interface (UPI) remained the most preferred mode of payment in terms of volume followed by debit cards, Immediate Payment Services (IMPS) and credit cards, said a new report on Thursday.

UPI recorded a transaction volume of 10.8 billion in 2019, a year-over-year increase of 188 percent, said the report from payments company Worldline India (WI).

“UPI is perhaps the fastest product to hit 1 billion transactions-a-month in 2019 since its inception in August 2016,” said the “India Digital Payments Report 2019”.

The findings of the report suggest that in India, digital payment products are being primarily utilized for person-to-person (P2P) transactions than person-to-merchants (P2M) transactions.

In terms of value, UPI facilitated transactions worth Rs 18.36 trillion, up 214 percent from 2018.

Nine banks were added in the UPI ecosystem throughout the year, bringing the total number of banks providing UPI services to 143 as of December 2019.

Some of the key factors that powered UPI’s transactions growth in 2019 are adoption of UPI 2.0 features by banks, enabling payments for IPO applications, facilitating Foreign Inward Remittance service, supporting donations for several relief programs, and numerous cashbacks and discounts offered by banks and non-bank players, said the report.

Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) recorded 55 per cent year-over-year increase by facilitating about 2.3 billion transactions in volume.

It clocked Rs 21.8 trillion in terms of value, up 41 per cent from 2018.

In 2019, it on-boarded 165 banks under its ecosystem bringing the total number of banks providing IMPS services to the customers of 559 banks by end of 2019. “In terms of value, IMPS attained the ‘numero uno’ position throughout the year followed by UPI. Value of debit and credit cards remained nearly the same throughout the year,” said the report. (IANS)

Also Read: Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions hit Rs 2.7 billion

Also Watch: IPL 2020: Rajasthan Royals to conduct camp in Guwahati from today, click here to see the video