In today’s UPI ecosystem, infra is table stakes and apps are distribution. If you’re not building a full-stack payments play, a standalone UPI app just doesn’t add up
I was curious to see where the allocation of 1500 crores came from. I did a slightly different calculation since I was curious to see the average xaction value. . I picked up the data from NPCI and calculated the MDR for all transactions from April 2024 to Feb 2025 in the 501-2000 Rs bucket . I assumed the MDR at 75p ( i.e.) made an assumption that all transactions were 500Rs. The figure was 799.75 crores for the entire period . If you use this figure then to calculate the average MDR is about 7.8 paisa. (i.e.) the average transaction is assumed to 52 Rupees in the 1-500 Rupee segment . So this is very different from the 40 paisa per transaction that was assumed in the article . Just a different thought experiment
16B x 62% x 96% = 9.5B / month. At a cost of 40p per transaction, annually, this comes to ~INR 4843 Cr . Some thing is not right in the above figure. Is that per month or is that 4 p / transaction . the 9.5B/ month is correct
16B transactions per month x 62% (which is the P2M volume) x 96% (volume of transactions with ticket size < INR 2k) = 9.5B transactions.
Calculations:
1) Cost of 1 UPI transaction to the ecosystem: = INR 0.4 or 40p.
2) Cost of P2M > INR 2k txns per month to the ecosystem: 9.5B x INR 0.4 = INR 380 Cr per month
3) Cost per year: INR 380 Cr per month x 12 = INR 4560 Cr per year (difference in this and the number mentioned in the article is due to some rounding up, the total number of transactions between Jan and Feb '25 is 16 - 17B txns.
Just curious to see how did u arrive at the value of xactions < 2k INR . The NPCI seems to share the volume and the value not per transaction value . Is there a pointer to this data ?
NPCI is the source. They share both the value and the volume of transactions by transaction size buckets. On their website, go to ecosystem statistics, and check the P2P / P2M break-up - you should see it there.
thanks a lot for the detailed data backed analysis. great PoV.
Thank you for reading!
I was curious to see where the allocation of 1500 crores came from. I did a slightly different calculation since I was curious to see the average xaction value. . I picked up the data from NPCI and calculated the MDR for all transactions from April 2024 to Feb 2025 in the 501-2000 Rs bucket . I assumed the MDR at 75p ( i.e.) made an assumption that all transactions were 500Rs. The figure was 799.75 crores for the entire period . If you use this figure then to calculate the average MDR is about 7.8 paisa. (i.e.) the average transaction is assumed to 52 Rupees in the 1-500 Rupee segment . So this is very different from the 40 paisa per transaction that was assumed in the article . Just a different thought experiment
16B x 62% x 96% = 9.5B / month. At a cost of 40p per transaction, annually, this comes to ~INR 4843 Cr . Some thing is not right in the above figure. Is that per month or is that 4 p / transaction . the 9.5B/ month is correct
Please see the below calculations:
16B transactions per month x 62% (which is the P2M volume) x 96% (volume of transactions with ticket size < INR 2k) = 9.5B transactions.
Calculations:
1) Cost of 1 UPI transaction to the ecosystem: = INR 0.4 or 40p.
2) Cost of P2M > INR 2k txns per month to the ecosystem: 9.5B x INR 0.4 = INR 380 Cr per month
3) Cost per year: INR 380 Cr per month x 12 = INR 4560 Cr per year (difference in this and the number mentioned in the article is due to some rounding up, the total number of transactions between Jan and Feb '25 is 16 - 17B txns.
Sorry . I had a copy-paste error . I have 160B transactions instead of 16 B transactions
Just curious to see how did u arrive at the value of xactions < 2k INR . The NPCI seems to share the volume and the value not per transaction value . Is there a pointer to this data ?
NPCI is the source. They share both the value and the volume of transactions by transaction size buckets. On their website, go to ecosystem statistics, and check the P2P / P2M break-up - you should see it there.
https://www.npci.org.in/what-we-do/upi/upi-ecosystem-statistics . Thank you . I was searching under the "Statistics" section.