Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das on Monday said payments through UPI (unified payment interface) have grown exponentially in the past 12 months with daily transactions crossing 36 crore, which is up 50 per cent from 24 crore in February 2022.

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In value terms, these transactions are worth Rs 6.27 lakh crore, registering a growth of 17 per cent from Rs 5.36 lakh crore in February 2022, the governor told reporters while launching the Digital Payments Awareness Week at the RBI headquarters here this afternoon.

He also said the overall monthly digital payment transactions crossed over Rs 1,000-crore-mark each month during the past three months.

"Our payment systems are talked about globally and several countries have shown interest to replicate our success story. It is a matter of pride that our payment systems have witnessed over 1,000 crore transactions every month since December 2022. This speaks volumes of the robustness of our payments ecosystem and acceptance by consumers. A recent pan-India digital payments survey (covering 90,000 respondents) revealed that 42 per cent of respondents have used digital payments," Das said.

In terms of volume, the number of UPI transactions exceeded 800 crore in January 2023, while NEFT (National Electronic Funds Transfer) witnessed the highest ever daily volume of 3.18 crore transactions on February 28.

The UPI was launched in 2016, and since then it has emerged as the most popular and preferred payment mode pioneering person-to-person and person-to-merchant transactions accounting for 75 per cent of the total digital payments.

The volume of UPI transactions has increased manifold from 0.45 crore in January 2017 to 804 crore in January 2023. The value of UPI transactions has increased from just Rs 1,700 crore to Rs 12.98 lakh crore during the same period.

On tokenisation exercise, he said the RBI has created over 48 crore card tokens, which have processed over 86 crore transactions, making it the world's biggest tokenisation exercise. Tokenised transactions have increased from 35 per cent initially to 62 per cent of the ecosystem.

The customer friendly recurring mandate framework has helped increase the number of e-mandates which were around 2-3 crore earlier or worth Rs 130 crore, to around 15 crore or worth Rs 1,700 crore now.

Acceptance of digital payments infrastructure has increased from 17 crore touch points to 26 crore touch points, which is an increase of 53 per cent.
The governor also launched 'Har payment digital' mission which seeks to reinforce RBI's commitment to deepen digital payments in the country.

While the UPI has facilitated digital payments to retail outlets, kiranas, street vendors etc, the Bharat bill payment system (BBPS) has ensured migration of bill payments from cash/cheques to digital mode and the national electronic toll collection (NETC) system has helped in migration of the toll payments to digital mode with enhancing efficiency in terms of reduced waiting time at toll plazas, the governor said.

The national automated clearing house (NACH) system has also facilitated the direct benefit transfers (DBT) payments digitally and eliminating leakages in the system.
Das further said the RBI has decided to adopt 75 villages by involving village-level entrepreneurs as part of the 75 digital villages programme. Under this programme, PSOs will adopt 75 villages and convert them into digital payment enabled villages.

Addressing the same event, which also marks the 18th year of the Department of Payments Settlement Systems at the RBI, deputy governor Rabi Sankar who heads the department, said over the past five years the digital payments have grown 15 per cent annually.

Financial formalisation of the economy is a must as money is at the core of any economy, Sankar said, adding the digital vision 2025 of the RBI (when the department turns 20 years) is to ensure digital payments by everyone, everywhere and every time.