Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions fell by 1.8 per cent in September relative to August, moving from 2,450 crore transactions to 2,407 crore as per RBI data released on Thursday, October 1, amid market speculations that usage could decline following the October 15 rollout of a proposed 0.4 per cent merchant discount rate (MDR) on specific payments above Rs 2,000. In tandem with the volume drop, the total value of transactions processed through the NPCI-developed platform fell by 1.50 per cent to Rs 29.37 lakh crore in September from Rs 29.82 lakh crore a month prior, arriving right ahead of the new person-to-merchant (P2M) MDR fee implementation for transactions over Rs 2,000. Despite these figures, PTI news agency sources attributed the slowdown to calendar differences since August had 31 days against September’s 30, emphasizing that average daily transactions actually grew from 791 million to 802 million month-on-month. Furthermore, RBI’s September figures detailed the performance of other payment systems, with the NPCI-run IMPS logging 354 million transactions worth 705 trillion rupees, the RTGS platform handling 32.5 million transactions valued at 2,357.1 trillion rupees, and NEFT recording 862 million transactions worth 467.5 trillion rupees.
UPI Volume Drops to 2,407 Crore as Transactions Fall 1.8% in September Preceding New MDR Guidelines
