Credit and finance for MSMEs: The peer-to-merchant (P2M) UPI transactions saw 140 per cent growth in December 2022 to 422.7 crore from 175.4 crores in December 2021, showed latest UPI data from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). The value of transactions also increased by 84 per cent from Rs 1.57 lakh crore in December 2021 to Rs 2.90 lakh crore in December 2022.
P2M transactions had a 54 per cent share in total UPI volume of 782.9 crore transactions in December in comparison to 360.2 crore peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions with a 46 per cent share. P2M transactions by value were limited to 22.6 per cent share only in comparison to 77.3 per cent share of P2P transactions in the overall transaction value of Rs 12.82 lakh crore in December.
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In a month-on-month comparison, November saw 390.7 crore P2M transactions amounting to Rs 2.69 lakh crore. P2M transactions had a 53.4 per cent share in total UPI volume of 730.9 crore transactions in November while peer-to-peer (P2P) had a 46.5 per cent share with the remaining 340.1 crore transactions. In terms of value, P2M transactions had a share of 22.5 per cent share vis-a-vis 77.41 per cent share of P2P transactions in the total UPI transaction value of Rs 11.90 lakh crore in November.
Among categories which recorded high volumes of approved UPI transactions in December, according to the NPCI data, were groceries and supermarkets, eating places and restaurants, games, department stores, pharmacies, etc., while bakeries, debt collection agencies, dairies, speciality retail outlets, wallet top-ups, etc., were medium transaction categories. Electronic shops, brokers and dealers, tolls and bridge fees, cable and other pay television services were other categories with lesser volume than high and medium categories.
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The merchant transactions are expected to get a boost with the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) project that aims to complement existing forms of money and payment. The CBDC pilot for the retail segment was launched by the central bank in December 2022. Ahead of the launch, the RBI had said that the pilot will also allow payments to merchants using QR codes displayed at merchant locations.
The retail CBDC pilot will aim to check the robustness of the “entire process of digital rupee creation” and its distribution and retail usage in real-time. Moreover, different features and applications of the e₹-R token (retail digital rupee) and architecture will be tested in future pilots, based on the learnings from this pilot, RBI had said.