SBI Becomes #1 Bank For UPI Transactions: 1.3 Billion UPI Transactions IN 4 Months!

Data released by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) shows that the State Bank of India (SBI) has cornered the maximum share of Unified Payments Interface (UPI)-based transactions for the first 4 months of 2020.

Read to find out more…

SBI Tops the Charts With Maximum UPI Transactions!

UPI is an interbank digital payments mechanism which allows consumers to make payments through smartphones, either by transferring money to another UPI ID or by scanning QR codes. As per the data, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, SBI, Yes Bank, HDFC Bank and Paytm Payments Bank are the largest banks in this space. 

A whooping 1.3 billion UPI transactions originated from SBI in the first 4 months of 2020.

This means customers have used an SBI bank account to make these payments. The payment may have been done through the SBI app or any other third party app like Google Pay.

SBI recorded 350 million transactions in February, the highest in the last four months. In January it carried out 347 million transactions. In March, this dropped to 338 million. When the entire country was under a stringent lockdown due to COVID-19 in April, this dropped further to 298 million transactions.

In the same four months, Axis Bank originated close to 450 million transactions, followed by HDFC Bank with 427 million, Paytm Payments Bank with 386 million and ICICI Bank with 340 million transactions.

However, NPCI data showed that in terms of transaction success rates, Axis Bank showed the highest success rate in April at 96%, followed by ICICI Bank around 95%. Banks consistently have shown upwards of 90% success rates.

In May, UPI recorded 1.2 billion transactions supporting the transfer of Rs 2.2 lakh crore.

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Yes Bank the Major Player in UPI Transactions?

While Yes Bank has been one of the major players in UPI, it has mostly seen transactions coming into its bank accounts, meaning consumers have paid Yes Bank account holders. Yes Bank recorded more than 573 million such transactions. A bulk of this could be merchant payments. NPCI did not offer any separate distinction between merchant transactions and person-to-person transactions.

A senior banker while maintaining anonymity said, “This has happened because they have acquired merchants for digital payments very aggressively who would have received these transactions. Historically, Yes Bank has been one of the leaders in merchant payments on UPI.”

UPI Transactions Gaining Fame!

Deepak Abbott, who was previously a Senior Vice-President at Paytm said, “UPI has ensured that any bank account holder can easily participate in digital payments, irrespective of that bank’s digital capabilities. Third-party UPI apps have made payments both inter-person and merchant payments seamless using a bank account of the customer’s choice.” 

Among popular third-party payment apps Google Pay, Paytm and PhonePe are the major competitors competing for a share of the UPI payments pie. 

Facebook-owned WhatsApp Payments is also set to go live on UPI soon but it depends on the instant messaging app submitting data localisation plans for NPCI and Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) consideration.