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With the government’s focus on encouraging digital payments, IMPS, UPI and the BHIM app continued to go strong in the new year with all three registering new records in the amount of cash transacted last month. Barring UPI, the number of transactions on IMPS and BHIM platforms also registered all-time record in January.
The Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) registered a record in both volume and amount of funds transacted last month. With 567 member banks, as many as 25.95 crore transactions, totalling ₹2.16-lakh crore, took place on the IMPS platform in January this year, according to data with the National Payments Corporation of India.
In December 2019, 25.64 crore transactions, involving ₹2.10-lakh crore, were carried out through IMPS. Similarly, in the case of Unified Payments Interface (UPI), though the number of transactions fell marginally in January to 130.5 crore, the total amount transacted was at an all-time high of ₹2.16-lakh crore.
In comparison, December witnessed 130.8 crore transactions amounting to ₹2.02-lakh crore. Transactions through the BHIM app were also robust and reached an all-time record in January. As many as 1.85 crore transactions worth ₹6,611.22 crore took place last month on the platform, compared to 1.78 crore transactions in December amounting to ₹6,316.37 crore. To encourage digital payments, the government has also done away with the MDR charges on transactions through RuPay and UPI platforms from January 1 this year.
FASTags in December
Meanwhile, FASTag issuances crossed the one-crore-mark in December as they were made mandatory for the payment of toll on National Highways.
According to NPCI data, 24 banks were live on the National Electronic Toll Collection platform in December through which FASTags are issued. The issuance of FASTags surged by over 47 per cent to 1.16 crore in December, compared to 79.01 lakh in November. The number of transactions also nearly doubled to 6.43 crore in December totalling ₹1,256.84 crore. It amounted to 3.49 crore transactions worth ₹773.95 crore in November.
The number is expected to have risen further in January after the Centre extended the deadline for making FASTags mandatory to January 15 from the earlier December 15.
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