Heena Sharma Blog

Among UPI (unified payments interface) apps, Google Pay contributed 59 per cent and Walmart-owned PhonePe facilitated 26 per cent, followed by Paytm (7 per cent) and BHIM (6 per cent) in digital transactions in 2019, according to fintech firm Razorpay’s report ‘The Era of Rising Fintech.’ The report provides an in-depth study of a rapidly evolving fintech ecosystem in India and analyses the patterns of digital transactions and the impact of industry innovations, such as UPI, which are harnessing a digitally inclusive economy. In 2018, Google Pay contributed 48 per cent and BHIM facilitated 27 per cent in digital transaction, followed by PhonePe (15 per cent) and Paytm (4 per cent). Also, Amazon Pay was the most preferred wallet among consumers (33 per cent), followed by Ola Money (17 per cent) in 2019. While the usage of cards (46 per cent) and Net banking (11 per cent) saw a decline in 2019, down from 56 per cent and 23 per cent respectively in 2018, UPI (38 per cent) went up

The US Federal Reserve, or the Fed, should replicate India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) model for its proposed interbank real-time gross settlement (RTGS) service, Google has recommended. Launched in 2016, the UPI is the country’s flagship real-time payments system, which allows users to transfer money directly from their bank accounts. Since it works across multiple bank accounts, without revealing the details of one’s account to the other party, it makes paying someone as simple as handing over cash. It clocked 1.2 billion transactions in November, valued at Rs 1.89 trillion. Citing the UPI’s phenomenal success in India, Google, in a letter to the Fed, said FedNow should be an open system, like the UPI. “ We’ve been pretty vocal that we believe the right model for driving digital payments is through partnership between banks, governments and tech companies through open and standard-based infrastructures like UPI,” tweeted Caesar Sengupta, general manager & vice-pr