Cash is still king in India, but digital payments rising sharply: RBI

"India is next only to China in terms of the cash. However, the percentage of cash withdrawals to GDP has been constant in India at around 17 per cent," the report said.

Cash is still king in India, but there has been a perceptible shift in favour of digitisation in recent years, according to an internal study of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Having a high currency in circulation (CIC) relative to gross domestic product (GDP) is a good indicator of cash being highly preferred for payments. Based on this assumption, “India continues to have a strong bias for cash payments," the study noted.

Demonetisation and an active growth in GDP brought down the cash in circulation as a percentage of GDP to 8.70 per cent in 2016-17. This increased to 10.70