The Economic Survey 2021-22 highlighted the growing trend of increasing digital transactions over the years and emergence of Unified Payments Interface (UPI) as the most preferred mode of transactions since its launch.

UPI emerged as the single largest retail payment system in India in terms of number of transactions. In December 2021, a whopping 4.6 billion transactions worth Rs 8.26 lakh crore were carried out on the platform. More than 50% of these UPI transactions were below Rs 200, according to NCPI, the Survey highlighted. One of the initial objectives of UPI was to replace cash for low value transactions, it added.

Commensurate with growing participating in equity markets, UPI also emerged as a popular method of participation in the primary market by investors. The Survey highlighted that on November 1, 2018, SEBI introduced UPI as a payment channel to invest in IPO to the retail investors and by April-November 202, more than 24.26 million transaction requests amounting to Rs 44,381 crore were created using UPI. Overtime, RBI has increased the transaction limit for IPO participation from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 5 lakh.

UPI will soon be acceptable at merchant outlets in 2 more countries other than India—Singapore and Bhutan.

“RBI and the Monetary Authority of Singapore announced a project to link UPI and PayNow, which is targeted for operationalisation by July 2022. Bhutan recently became the first country to adopt UPI standards for its QR code. It is also the second country after Singapore to have BHIM-UPI acceptance at merchant locations,” the Survey noted.

Another popular payment method is Immediate Payment Service (IMPS), which was used to process transactions worth Rs 29,349 billion during April-December 2021.

On October 8, 2021, the central bank increased the daily limit of IMPS transactions from Rs 2 lakh to Rs 5 lakh which should further help in boosting digital payments.

Another digital payment solution launched in August 2021, e-RUPI is a person-specific, and purpose- specific digital voucher where it is not required for the customer to have a bank account and is operable on basic phones, even in areas which lack an internet connection. The first use case of e-RUPI was implemented for COVID-19 vaccination program which saw more than 2.2 lakh beneficiaries being issued the voucher