India has potential to do 100 billion UPI transactions a month: NPCI CEO

Mumbai: India has the potential to do 100 billion Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions a month, a top official from the National Payments Corporation of India said on Tuesday.

This would be a 10-time growth over the 10 billion transactions achieved by the 2016-launched platform in August.

Dilip Asbe, chief executive officer and managing director of NPCI, said there are 350 million UPI users at present and pegged the growth opportunity in merchants and users at 3 times more.

"...if you take the combined effect, we have a 10x opportunity from where we stand," Asbe said speaking at the Global Fintech Fest here.

He declined to specify a date by which NPCI aims to reach there, but said that by 2030, India will witness 2 billion transactions a day.

At present, global giant Visa processes 22.5 billion transactions a month, while its rival MasterCard does over 11 billion transactions.

Asbe also said that credit card usage can witness a ten-time growth if the industry shifts to the emerging trend of sachetisation, but was quick to add that it is possible only if banks provide the right platforms.

At present, the cost of acquisition and underwriting in credit cards are too high, which poses a challenge to the inclusion agenda, but digital and technological services can help decrease it, he said.

On the internationalisation of the UPI, Asbe said such efforts take regulatory help and by 2030, NPCI is aiming to have the right tie-ups to enable seamless payments between India and half of the top-30 markets.

The body is also in talks with Singaporean authorities to increase the single transaction limit to over SGD 5,000 from the present SGD 1,000, Asbe said.

NPCI is also aiming to evolve as a contributor to open source technology as part of a new avatar, from being a consumer of such technologies, he said.