For merchants it pays to use UPI, deals share up at 31%

BENGALURU: Unified Payments Interface (UPI), mainly used for person-to-person (P2P) payments, is now finding wider adoption in merchant payments, a perceptible shift as companies move away from giving incentives for P2P payments to make their businesses more viable. The share of merchant payments on UPI has grown consistently over the last one year, numbers accessed by ET show.
It has grown to 31% in June from around 16% of total UPI transactions in April last year. Around 240 million merchant payments were reported in June, according to industry estimates, translating to the 31% share.
Companies cannot continue to burn cash to acquire customers unless they transact actively through them. “Only peer-to-peer transactions do not create any value,” said Deepak Abbot, senior vice-president at Paytm.