India Witnesses 100-Fold Jump In Retail Digital Payments: RBI

Retail digital payments in India have grown from 162 crore transactions in the financial year 2012-13 to over 16,416 crore transactions in the financial year 2023-24 — an approximately 100-fold increase over 12 years, according to a new RBI report.

The remarkable growth in payment infrastructure and performance is also reflected in the Digital Payment Index published by the RBI, which has seen more than a four-fold rise in the last six years (445.50 for March 2024, with a base of 100 as of March 2018), according to the Central Bank’s Payment Systems Report.

Overall, digital payments in India have grown exponentially over the last decade.

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“While in CY-2013, there were 222 crore digital transactions valued at Rs 772 lakh crore, this number has increased 94 times in volume and more than 3.5 times in value, reaching over 20,787 crore transactions valued at Rs 2,758 lakh crore in CY-2024,” the report highlighted.

In the last five years alone, digital payments in India have increased 6.7 times in volume and 1.6 times in value. This translates to a five-year CAGR of 45.9% in digital payment volume and 10.2% in digital payment value.

From a nascent digital payment ecosystem, primarily consisting of traditional card-based digital payments, India has now evolved into an ecosystem offering a variety of digital payment options catering to the diverse needs of consumers. These include instant payment systems (UPI, IMPS), small-value payment systems (PPI, UPI Lite), large-value payments (RTGS), bill payments (BBPS), bulk payments (NACH), offline payments (UPI Lite X), government payments (NACH, APBS), toll payments (NETC), and many more.

The Reserve Bank is also focusing on interlinking fast payment systems (FPS) with those of other countries to provide a seamless and less costly cross-border payment experience.

Last year, the Unified Payments Interface of India (UPI) and PayNow of Singapore were interlinked through extensive collaboration between the RBI and the Monetary Authority of Singapore. Recent data shows that the cost of sending remittances has noticeably decreased, the report stated.