Mobile wallet transactions hit record ₹15,202 crore in July: RBI data

New Delhi: The value of transactions made through mobile wallets touched a record ₹ 15,202 crore in July, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data released on Friday showed, rising around 4% from ₹ 14,632 crore in June.

The number of transactions also increased by around 5% to 325.28 million in July, which brings it very close to the an all-time high of 325.41 million in May. Around 309.62 million transactions were recorded in June.

New records have been set in terms of transaction value over the last three months, indicating the adoption of the payment system by users despite the stringent know-your-customer (KYC) procedure laid down by RBI.

The central bank’s directive that all wallet issuers follow strict KYC guidelines starting 1 March caused considerable disruption, as customers struggled to get their KYC done amid inadequate infrastructure. The wallet companies, which struggled to set up compliance infrastructure and convince users to provide KYC documents, have survived the storm and signed up new customers.

“Most mobile wallet customers’ end up doing their KYC only to avail the incentives such as cashbacks. The actual extent to which KYC of wallet users have been done also needs to be looked into,” said Dewang Neralla, chief executive, Atom Technologies Ltd, a payments service provider.

One of the possible reasons why the value of transactions is increasing is because of the cashbacks offered on high value transactions. With time, the cashbacks have shifted from small value to high value transactions, said Neralla.

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Guidelines on interoperability, awaited for several months, are expected to be issued soon by the RBI. It is likely to bring it on a par with banks.

Debit and credit card transactions, too, hit a record, both in terms of value and volume of transactions. Transactions worth ₹ 3.64 trillion were carried out in July, up 3.6% from ₹ 3.62 trillion in the previous month. The volume of card transactions increased by around 1% to 1,293.28 million in July from 1,248.26 million in June.

The volume of transactions through mobile banking increased marginally and reached a peak of 307.74 million transactions in July. However, the value of transactions fell by around 10% to ₹ 1.7 trillion in July from ₹ 1.9 trillion in the previous month.

Payments using real-time gross settlement (RTGS) fell marginally by around 4% to 10.97 million in July from 11.43 million in the preceding month.