New Delhi: There has been a sharp increase in transactions through Unified Payment Interface (UPI) during the first half of the calendar year 2024. According to a report released on Thursday by payment technology service provider Worldline, 78.97 billion transactions were done through UPI during January-June 2024. This is an increase of 52 percent compared to the same period last year.

The report said that UPI continues to dominate the payment market and is rapidly expanding its reach. The value of UPI transactions has increased by 40 percent in the first half. During January-June 2024, transactions worth Rs 116.63 lakh crore were done, which was Rs 83.16 lakh crore in the same period of 2023.

According to the report, there were 8.03 billion transactions through UPI in January 2023, which is expected to increase to 13.9 billion in June 2024. Transactions worth Rs 12.98 lakh crore were done in January 2023. Their value in June this year was Rs 20.07 lakh crore. PhonePe has been on top in UPI payments in terms of value and transactions.

This is followed by Google Pay and Paytm. However, the average ticket size of UPI transactions has decreased by eight percent in the first half. The average ticket size of UPI transactions was Rs 1,603 in the first half of 2023, which has been Rs 1,478 in the same period in 2024.

Will people reduce the use of UPI?

Recently, a survey by LocalCircles was released. Many interesting things about UPI came to light in this. According to the survey, if any fee is imposed on UPI transactions, then about 75 percent of the users will stop using it.

The survey also shows that 38% of people are heavily dependent on UPI. They do more than 50% of their total transactions through UPI. The rest are debit cards, credit cards or other digital means.

Actually, there were reports that the government may impose transaction fees on transactions through UPI. This was also discussed in the GST Council meeting. However, the Council postponed the decision on this for the next meeting.