Digital transactions' growth continues, volume touches 1.11 Bn in January

Digital transactions, including payments through credit and debit cards, the unified payments interface (UPI), unstructured supplementary service data (USSD), prepaid payment instruments (PPIs) and internet banking, have been growing at an unprecedented rate month-on-month.

After crossing the 1-billion mark in volume in December, digital transactions reached a new high of 1.11 billion, growing by 4.73 per cent, in January.

The provisional data was released on Tuesday by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

The total value of digital transactions also touched the second highest point with Rs 131.95 trillion in January. Last year in March, the overall digital transactions' value touched a whopping Rs 149.59 trillion.

Also read: Digital transactions touch 1.06 Bn mark, values surpass Rs 125 trillion in December

Besides, transactions through debit cards, UPI and Aadhaar-enabled payments system (AEPS) saw a surge. Last month, the government announced it would bear merchant discount rate (MDR) for a period of two years on these transactions.

The volume of debit and credit transactions increased by around 1.43 per cent in January and touched the 267.7 million mark as compared to 263.9 million transactions in the previous month.

However, the value of transactions on these cards fell by 3 per cent to Rs 512.2 billion in January from Rs 528.7 billion in the previous month. Card transactions of four banks have been considered by the RBI.

UPI transactions continue to be the most favoured. The UPI transaction volume jumped to 151.7 million, up around 4 per cent from 145.5 million in the previous month. The value of transactions also increased by 18 per cent to Rs 155.4 billion in January from Rs 131.4 billion in the previous month.

The government-backed Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM) UPI app is still struggling to find ground. BHIM accounted for 9.57 million transactions, amounting to Rs 3.65 billion. In December 2017, the BHIM UPI app transacted a total volume of 9.1 million with transactions worth Rs 3.08 billion.

PPI transactions such as mobile wallets also witnessed a rise in January and touched a new high of 113.6 million transactions as compared with 99.1 million in December. Transactions worth Rs 38.3 billion were recorded in January compared with Rs 35.1 billion in December.

Payments using National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) increased by around 1 per cent and Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) grew by 2.4 per cent in January from the preceding month.

The development was first reported by Mint.