Digital payments in India to account for 71% of all payments by 2025: report

MUMBAI: Digital payments in India are set to account for 71.7% of the total payments volume by 2025, leaving cash and cheques at 28.3%, according to a report by a US-based payment systems company ACI worldwide.

In 2020, transaction volume share in India stood at 15.6% and 22.9% for instant payments and other electronic payments, respectively, while paper-based payments had a considerable share of 61.4%, said the report, released on Wednesday.

By 2025, the share of volume by instant payments and other electronic payments, however, is expected to rise to 37.1% and 34.6% respectively, leaving the volume of paper-based transactions at 28.3%. Furthermore, by 2024 the share of real time payments volume in overall electronic transactions will exceed 50%, according to the report.

The report also said that by 2024 the share of real time payments volume in overall electronic transactions will exceed 50%.

“India’s journey of creating a digital financial infrastructure has been characterized by collaboration between the government, the regulator, banks and fintechs. This has helped to advance the country’s goal of enabling financial inclusion and also provided rapid payments digitization for citizens. The pandemic has further accelerated adoption of digital payments with many first time users adopting digital payments and significant uplift by merchants,” said Kaushik Roy, VP and head of product management, Asia, ME and Africa, ACI Worldwide

India currently is at the top spot with 25.5 billion in real-time payments transactions, followed by China with 15.7 bn transactions.