Unified Payments Interface (UPI) registered 17.89 billion transactions in April, marking a marginal 2.24% decline from the 18.30 billion transactions recorded in March. The transaction volume in value terms also saw a slight month-on-month drop of 3.3%, settling at Rs 23.95 lakh crore in April compared to Rs 24.77 lakh crore in the previous month.
Despite the dip, year-on-year growth remained strong. April’s transaction count reflected a 34% year-on-year rise, while the transaction amount saw a 22% jump compared to the same month last year.
According to NPCI data, the average daily transaction count for April stood at 596 million, up from 590 million in March. The average daily transaction value also slightly increased to Rs 79,831 crore from Rs 79,910 crore in March.
Since April has 30 days compared to March’s 31, adding one day’s average daily transaction volume to April’s total UPI volume would bring it on par with March’s transaction count. The small dip in April is likely attributable to the fewer number of business days in the month and possibly the stabilization after March’s financial year-end rush.
PhonePe, as usual, maintained its leadership among top UPI apps as of March, followed by Google Pay, Paytm, Navi, and Super.money. With a commanding 47.25% market share by transaction volume, PhonePe processed 8.64 billion transactions. Google Pay followed closely with 36.04%, handling 6.59 billion transactions. Together, the two giants controlled over 83% of the UPI transaction volume.
In a recent development, the Indian government approved a new scheme with a budget of Rs 1,500 crore to encourage small merchants to use digital payments through the BHIM-UPI platform.