UPI is abuzz with debt payments: Keep watch

A slice-up of transfers via this platform suggests that loan repayments account for nearly 4% of the ₹25 trillion sent across in July. Given our app lending boom, let's track this trend

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It was not ingenuity as much as gumption that gave India a global headstart on payments done via handsets. While the West dithered on digital identities over qualms of privacy, we went ahead with the biometric database of Aadhaar, linking it securely with bank accounts and phones to create such marvels as the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). In the end, outcomes matter. Bank transfers by UPI are not just convenient, they have grown ubiquitous enough to offer useful snapshots of the money flowing around through this platform.

Take last month's data from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which runs UPI. By usage volume, it kept up its routine of setting yet another record. Almost 19.5 billion UPI transactions were logged in July, with a bit over ₹25 trillion zipped across. Annualized, that would be ₹300 trillion, a huge figure as a proportion of GDP. The grand bonus for data addicts, though, is NPCI's reported slice-up of these instant online transfers.