Nearly 4 out of 5 digital transactions via UPI, says RBI annual report

Nearly four out of five digital payments in the country were conducted on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) in financial year 2024 (FY24), according to the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) annual report.

UPI's share, compared to the cumulative volume of digital payments in the country, has grown from 73.4 per cent in FY23 to 79.7 per cent in FY24. In FY20, UPI’s share as compared to the volume of total digital payments in India was pegged at 36.8 per cent.

UPI has emerged as one of the most popular methods to transact digitally over the past few years.

The volume of digital payments in FY24 was pegged at 164.4 billion transactions, up 44 per cent on a year-on-year (Y-o-Y) basis, from 113.9 billion transactions in FY23. In FY20, the country recorded a total of 34 billion digital UPI transactions.

The report further added that the Payments Infrastructure Development Fund (PIDF) has aided in the growth of digital payments in the last financial year, the RBI said. Deployments of Point of Sale (PoS), mobile PoS terminals, interoperable Quick Response (QR) codes, among others, have been subsidised under the scheme.

In FY24, the number of PoS terminals increased by 14.3 per cent on a Y-o-Y basis to 8.9 million, with the number of Bharat QR (BQR) codes increasing by 16.1 per cent to 6.2 million, according to RBI data.

UPI QR codes increased 35 per cent on a Y-o-Y basis to 346 million codes at the end of FY24.

On taking UPI international, the annual report said that the RBI, along with NPCI International Payments Ltd. (NIPL), will work towards taking UPI to 20 countries with an initiation timeline of 2024-25 and a completion timeline of 2028-29.

The RBI gave a final nod to 22 online payment aggregators.

Debit card transactions have continued to decline, reaching a five-year low.

In FY24, the RBI recorded 2.28 billion transactions on debit cards, a 33 per cent Y-o-Y decrease, from 3.41 billion transactions in FY23. The latest numbers are nearly half of the 5.06 billion debit card transactions recorded in FY20.

Credit card transactions have continued to rise. In FY24, credit card transactions were pegged at 3.56 billion, a 22 per cent Y-o-Y increase, from 2.9 billion transactions in FY23.