Fueled by the rise of Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions, the monthly user base of Google Pay - launched in India in September 2017 as UPI-based payment app ‘Tez’ - has grown from 14 million in March 2018 to 45 million this month, reports The Hindu.

According to the report, the transactions on Google Pay hit $81 billion in March 2019 at an annualised run-rate level.

“Google Pay is accepted at over 2,000 online merchants, including use cases such as food delivery, travel, movie/event tickets and even trading and investments, and has created an impact beyond metros,” Google Pay India’s product management director Ambarish Kenghe was quoted in the report as saying.

Kenghe added that the service is being used across three lakh cities, towns and villages in India, with two out of every three transactions from beyond the top seven metros.

“UPI transaction volumes in the country have outpaced all other forms of digital payments, including wallets, mobile banking (NEFT, RTGS, IMPS) and cards (debit and credit cards). UPI transactions have grown 40 times from 17 million in August 2017 to 674 million today,” Kenge said.

Apart from using popular services like bill payment and mobile recharge, Google Pay users can also make payments to non-user of the application through the external payments feature, that allows money transfer with a bank account number and IFSC code instead of a mobile number, Kenghe said.