New Delhi, Sep 1 (IANS) In a significant development, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) crossed 20 billion transactions in August for the first time in its history, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) data showed on Monday.

In August, UPI transactions reached 20.01 billion mark, registering a 2.8 per cent increase over July (19.47 billion). On the annual basis, this is a 34 per cent increase.

In terms of value, UPI recorded transactions worth Rs 24.85 lakh crore during August, up 24 per cent on-year, the data showed.

Moreover, the average daily transaction count jumped to 645 million (up from 628 million in July), and the daily transaction value stood at Rs 80,177 crore, as per the NPCI data.

UPI had earlier achieved a record of crossing 700 million transactions in a single day on August 2.

This milestone comes on the back of steady growth over the past few months. The surge in August came despite the ban on real money gaming platforms.

In June, UPI clocked 18.40 billion transactions worth Rs 24.04 lakh crore. The following month, it saw a sharp rise to 19.47 billion transactions, a 5.8 per cent increase from June, with the transaction value climbing to Rs 25.08 lakh crore.

According to a latest SBI Research, Maharashtra emerged as the consistent leader in digital payments with 9.8 per cent share in July alone, followed by Karnataka (5.5 per cent) and Uttar Pradesh (5.3 per cent).

“The share of peer-to-merchant (P2M) transactions in total value transactions has increased from mere 13 per cent in Jun 2020 to 29 per cent in July 2025. During the same period, the share in volume has increased to 64 per cent from 39 per cent, indicating robust growth in digital payments and financial inclusion,” said the report.

Digital payments, led by UPI, have been increasing rapidly, which is much higher than the cash in circulation (CIC) number. The monthly average UPI transactions is Rs 24,554 billion, while CIC monthly average growth is Rs 193 billion during April-July 2025.

There are almost 300 major merchant category codes and NPCI has started with only 29 major MCCs. The top 15-merchant categories accounts 70 per cent in terms of volume and 47 per cent in terms of value in July 2025.

The groceries account for 24.3 per cent of the transactions and 8.8 per cent in value and debt collection agencies category accounts for 12.8 per cent share in terms of value but only 1.3 per cent share in volume, said the SBI report.

–IANS

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