The value of Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions crossed $1 trillion in FY22, showed data released by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). As on March 29, the value of UPI transactions for the year added up to Rs 83.45 trillion, which works out to roughly $1 trillion.

The number of UPI transactions as of March 29 stood at 45.6 million. The usage of UPI as a payment channel has grown exponentially over the last few years, and is set to increase further as payments for feature phone users gets enabled. In a recent report, analysts at HDFC Securities said that mobile payments continue to gain incremental market share at a furious pace, constituting 52% of retail digital merchant payments during the first 11 months of FY22.

“It is pertinent to note that UPI P2M transactions have significantly eaten into the share of card and other payment modes,” Worldline said in a recent report. The share of merchant transactions in overall UPI payments was at 42% in February 2022 in volume terms and under 20% in value terms.

The NPCI is nearly ready for a pilot launch of wallet-based UPI payments. Named UPI Lite, the on-device wallet service will be in line with the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) framework for offline digital payments. It will enable transactions of up to Rs 200 at a time with wallet balances capped at Rs 2,000.

The launch of UPI Lite is among a series of measures aimed at making the UPI platform accessible to a larger set of users in the country. Apart from the launch of a UPI enablement for feature phone users, the payments ecosystem is also working to enable Aadhaar OTP-based UPI on-boarding which will not require users to have a debit card. Banks and other payment system players are expected to prepare their systems for launch by June 30, 2022.