Parul
The number of credit cards has more than doubled to around 10.80 crore in five years through December 2019, but the number of debit cards has remained relatively stable, says a Reserve Bank report released on Monday.
The report also said digital payments in India have grown exponentially in the last decade. While in calendar year (CY)-2013 there were 222 crore digital transactions valued at Rs 772 lakh crore, it has increased 94 times in volume and more than 3.5 times in value to over 20,787 crore transactions valued at Rs 2,758 lakh crore in CY-2024.
“In the last five years alone, digital payments in India have increased 6.7 times in volume and 1.6 times in value. This amounts to a five-year CAGR of 45.9 per cent in terms of digital payments volume and 10.2 per cent in terms of digital payments value,” said the Payment System Report, December 2024.
It further said at end-December 2024, the number of credit cards has more than doubled to around 10.80 crore as compared to December 2019, when there were 5.53 crore cards in circulation.
In contrast, the number of debit cards has remained relatively stable, with a marginal increase from 80.53 crore in December 2019 to slightly more than 99.09 crore in December 2024.
The report further said that the Reserve Bank of India has been working towards enhancing cross-border payments by linking UPI with the fast payment systems of other countries.
Such linkages, it said, aid in addressing the issues of high cost, low speed, limited access and lack of transparency in cross-border remittance payments. The fast payment systems of India (UPI) and Singapore (PayNow) were linked in February 2023.
RBI has also joined Project Nexus, a multilateral international initiative to enable instant cross-border retail payments by interlinking domestic fast payment systems of multiple countries. Payments to merchants using Indian UPI apps via QR codes has been enabled in Bhutan, France, Mauritius, Nepal, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and the UAE.
“When it comes to payment systems, the Reserve Bank has always endeavoured to stay ahead of the curve. It has been the policy of the Bank to encourage innovation in the payment sector,” said RBI Deputy Governor T. Rabi Sankar in the Foreword of the report.
RBI regularly engages with the PSOs and attempts to provide a nurturing environment. Fuelled by innovation and regulatory support, our payment systems have become one of the most modern across the globe.
Retail digital payments in India have grown from 162 crore transactions in the financial year 2012-13 to over 16,416 crore transactions in the financial year 2023-24 i.e., approximately 100-fold increase over 12 years.
The remarkable growth in payment infrastructure and payment performance is also apparent in the Digital Payment Index published by RBI, which has witnessed more than four-fold rise in the last six years (445.50 for March 2024, base 100 as of March 2018), the deputy governor said.
