E-Payment Volumes Soar 34% In 2002-03

Electronic payments (e-payments) are on the rise.More and more people are paying utility bills electronically, thus easing the pressure on the use of currency and cheques.

E-payments are a mix of electronic credit services (ECS), both credit and debit, and electronic funds transfer (ETF).

Such payments have jumped 80 per cent in value terms to Rs 10,221 crore in the financial year 2002-03 compared with Rs 5,664 crore in the previous fiscal.

In volume terms, however, the growth has been modest at 33.78 per cent, from 176.4 lakh transactions to 236 lakh.

ECS credit facility is used in utility bill payments, while the debit facility is used by financial intermediaries, such as Unit Trust of India, for dividend payments.

 

In terms of both volume and value, ECS credit facility is the leader with 187 lakh transactions worth Rs 6,862 crore.

At a seminar on smart card technology and its applications, R Gandhi, chief general manager (department of information technology) of the Reserve Bank of India, said,