One of the reports from Macquarie Research says that the unified payments interface (UPI) constitute about 10 per cent of retail payments in India now.

UPI has progressed at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 400 per cent from FY17-21.

Macquarie considered retail payments as all payments except the real-time gross settlements (RTGS) for its research.

The value of payments through UPI stood at Rs 41 lakh crore, about 2.8 times of credit and debit card payments at point-of-sale terminals, in FY21.

UPI payments were also around 20 times more than the value of payments through prepaid instruments and wallets in the given period.

“While the retail payments (by value) have delivered an 18 per cent compounded annual growth rate over FY15-FY21, UPI has grown at CAGR of 400 per cent over FY17-21 and now forms 10 per cent of overall retail payments (excluding RTGS) from 2 per cent seen couple of years ago,” the findings of the Macquaire report were quoted by the Bloomberg Quint.

Moreover, 45 per cent of total UPI transactions by volume are still peer-to-peer transfers and small-ticket purchases, whereas cards are used for transactions with higher ticket sizes.

The impact of the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in this regard can be assessed because average monthly transaction values via UPI have improved by over four times since 20th April onward.