India’s United Payments Interface (UPI), which is the flagship payments platform for the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), processed 3.24 billion transactions in July, a record, as digital payments rose, Business Standard reported.
That’s a boost of 15.7 percent from June, in which the UPI processed 2.8 billion transactions, according to the report. The second wave of the pandemic in April and May saw a blip in payments with the UPI. But once the economy began to open back up, payments also surged again.
In addition, the Immediate Payments Service (IMPS), which also works with digital payments under the NPCI, saw a 15 percent increase, according to the report. It had 349.76 million transactions in July.
Experts have said the pandemic has expedited the change to digital payments by around 5-10 years in India, the report stated. The general trend of digital payments increasing has been a trend throughout much of the world as the pandemic forced many aspects of daily life online as the real world became less safe.
India has seen some of its companies doing quite well amid the pandemic, such as Pine Labs, which raised $315 million, with backing from Fidelity Management and BlackRock, along with others like Neuberger Berman Investment Advisers, Ishana, Tree Line, IIFL AMC and Kotak, PYMNTS reported.
Pine Labs is headquartered in Mumbai and offers merchant solutions for in-store and doorstep payments, buy now, pay later (BNPL), online payments and prepaid issuance. The company also offers consumer investment services.
“Over the last year, Pine Labs has made significant progress in its offline to online strategy in India and the direct-to-consumer play in Southeast Asia,” said Pine Labs CEO B. Amrish Rau. “Our full-stack approach to payments and merchant commerce has allowed us to grow in-month merchant partnerships by nearly 100 percent over the last year.”
