Fuelled by growth of credit on the platform, National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) MD and CEO Dilip Asbe said that Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is looking at around 2 billion transactions a day by 2030. In a fireside chat with Rajan Anandan, MD of PeakXV Partners at GFF 2023, Asbe said that UPI could touch 100 billion transactions a month.
Asbe said that UPI was being used by 350 million people and NPCI’s aim is that it should be used by every Indian. “We have a 3X opportunity on the user side and a 3X opportunity on the merchant side. I see a total growth opportunity of 10X for UPI,” Asbe said. This comes as UPI crossed the milestone of 10 billion transactions in August 2023.
NPCI MD highlighted three main factors that has led to the rapid adoption of UPI across the country. He said that the tremendous support of the Government and the regulator whose objective of digital financial services has made UPI this popular. Asbe commended the role of fintechs in creating the digital payments revolution in India.
Talking about his 2030 vision, the NPCI Chief said with fintechs getting involved, there can be a 10X growth in the users on the credit side. “Sachetisation of credit is coming and we are working with HDFC and ICICI to ensure full digital onboarding,” Asbe added. In order to empower people to manage and use credit, Asbe said that there is an opportunity to make credit available real time that NPCI is working on.
According to Asbe, there are three phases of NPCI – first was the innovation DNA, second was to collaborate with Government and regulator to build the digital public infrastructure (DPI), third phase is for NPCI 3.0 to become a contributor in the open source format. He added that NPCI’s principle was that the payment system should move from west to east and that is happening now.
The NPCI Chief also said that UPI aims to be self-sufficient on cross border payments like it is on domestic payments. He said that globalisation of Indian DPIs provides a huge opportunity for the world. Asbe further added that there are two things that NPCI is doing in terms of globalisation: providing the stack and enabling cross border transactions that provides a huge opportunity for Indian fintechs in their globalisation efforts as well.