National Payments Corporation of India Hits Billion-Transaction Milestone

Back in July, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) reached a major milestone, crossing the one billion transactions point. An achievement by any standard, it’s not going to be the last for this group either, as it expects some very big things to come.

NPCI managed to achieve volume like this thanks in large part to the sheer number of breeds of payment it processes. It handles check and ATM clearing, but also handles POS traffic, RuPay, UPI, IMPS, BHIM and several others including Aadhaar-based payment operations. It’s currently operating 12 different payment systems, so it’s a little easier to reach the one billion transaction mark than it is for, say, a company with just one transaction system to account for.

The highest growth, as noted by the NPCI’s managing director and CEO A.P. Hota, is in mobile payments, as well as the Aadhaar-based systems recently brought out by the Indian government. Given the Indian government’s recent demonetization of around 80 percent of all currency in play, that’s really not surprising.

Hota, however, looks for big growth to follow, as the group may be able to reach the one billion transactions per day mark as “…the next logical target.” Hota projects that this could possibly happen in as little as three years. Given that the NPCI itself only started up in January 2010, with around 50 million transactions a month, reaching the billion transaction per day mark is going to require one major upswing to get there in three years.

It might happen, actually. Since the NPCI maintains so many different payment methods, it’s got a lot of faucets working to fill the bucket, so to speak. While some will likely lose ground going forward, like check traffic, others will increase flow. It’s also noteworthy that transaction volume doesn’t seem that stable. January 2010 to July 2017 is seven and a half years, roughly, but with 50 million transactions a month volume in its opening month, it seems like it should have cleared the billion mark before now.

Still, it’s clear that the company’s taking on plenty of volume, and will likely keep expanding from there. It’s a long way to go to a billion a month, though, especially when the first billion took this long.