It seems that a surge in low-ticket transactions across gaming apps during the IPL season is causing a headache for India’s Unified Payment Interface.
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Why Would This Happen?
During last month, it processed over Rs 5 lakh crore in payments.
April being the start of the IPL season, the volumes of the transactions are said to have increased sharply due to the traffic going through to gaming apps.
Since this traffic comes in bursts during the time of games that too with a huge number of very low-ticket transactions.
Interestingly, they are as low as Re 1 to Rs 10 sometime, hence hitting the UPI network, as per the sources.
Basically, these low-value transactions are possibly being used to push up volumes across gaming apps.
But, in turn, they are burdening the UPI network and bank systems, sources said.
What Is The Solution?
Considering the same, the National Payment Corporation of India may consider blocking gaming transactions of less than Rs 50 on the UPI network according to the Economic Times.
In the coming days, some action will be considered to keep a check on such transactions which are putting the system at risk.
Although, NCPI did not share their inputs on this matter.
Surge In UPI Transactions
Last month, the transactions via the Unified Payment Interface rose to Rs 5.04 lakh crore, which is significantly higher compared with Rs 4.25 lakh crore in February.
So far, the UPI transactions have been rising steadily since the platform was introduced in 2016.
However, the Covid-19 crisis gave a drastic push to digital transactions via UPI.
Same can be observed from the value of UPI transactions, which stood at Rs 41 lakh crore For the full financial year 2020-21.
Which is 95% higher compared to the Rs 21 lakh crore a year ago, as per the NPCI data.
In terms of transaction volume, it has surged by 78% in 2020-21 with 22.3 billion transactions going through the network last financial year.
What Does The Expert Say?
While talking on the expected restrictions, co-founder of Indiagold, Deepak Abbot said, “While blocking transactions for a set of merchants within a category or a particular merchant is technically possible for NPCI, to my mind, it does not set the right precedence for a digital payments facilitator, and that too the only one in the country, to put caps on payments,”.
Further adding, “It seems as if the NPCI is penalising businesses for its own infrastructure deficiencies…”.
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