Paytm Payments Bank hits 970M digital transactions in March; over 450M UPI payments

Paytm Payments Bank said it registered 970 million digital transactions in March 2021 with growth reported across its various services, including UPI, Wallet, and internet banking, among others.

The Noida-based fintech's banking arm said it processed 469.84 million UPI payments in March, and opened an average of one million savings and current accounts per month.

Paytm's Wallet services saw a growth of 15 percent in transactions month-on-month, the startup said, adding over 78 percent of its 325 million account holders use the service on a daily basis.

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"Our leadership in digital banking and payments is a testimony to the trust that the whole country has shown in our services. We will continue to empower more merchants across the country to join the digital payment ecosystem...," said Satish Kumar Gupta, CEO and Managing Director, Paytm Payments Bank.

In terms of UPI transactions, Paytm, citing the NPCI data, said it has the lowest technical decline rate at 0.11 percent among all UPI remitter banks, which has enabled it to become one of the largest beneficiaries for UPI transactions.

Paytm, followed by PhonePe, Google Pay, and BharatPe lead UPI transactions in India. On Monday, fintech startup BharatPe said it processed $830 million-worth UPI transactions on the back of 106 million transactions in March — its highest ever.

The COVID-19 pandemic has fuelled a massive growth in digital payments in India, especially across lower-tier cities and towns, as customers sought safer and more convenient modes of transactions.

Payments enabled by UPI more than doubled from April 2020 and helped India attain the tag of the "world's largest real-time digital payments market," outpacing China and the US, as per a report by ACI Worldwide and Global Data.

By 2025, digital payments are expected to account for over 70 percent of all payments volumes in India, leaving cash and cheques at below 30 percent, the report said.

The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) recorded over Rs 5 lakh crore worth of transactions in March on the back of 2.73 billion transactions, as per NPCI reports.