Bengaluru beats other cities to top in digital payments

Bengaluru leads the list of top 10 cities in India while Karnataka stood at the second position, behind Maharashtra, among the top 10 states that witnessed the highest number of digital payments for goods and services in 2019, global payments firm Worldline said, releasing the country-wide data on digital transactions on Thursday.

Grocery, restaurants, petrol stations and apparel stores witnessed the highest volume and value of digital transactions and the government-backed UPI became the country’s most preferred online payment mode, leaving behind credit and debit cards.

While grocery, restaurants, petrol stations, apparel stores and specialty retail accounted for about 62% volume of transactions and 39% of value, jewellery stores accounted for only 1% of total volume of transactions, and 8% of total value of transactions.

Unified Payments Interface (UPI), a real-time payment system developed by National Payments Corporation of India facilitating inter-bank transactions, recorded a transaction volume of over 1,000 crore across the country in 2019, a year-on-year increase of 188%. In terms of value, UPI facilitated transactions worth Rs 18.36 lakh crore, up 214% from 2018.

Transaction value of debit cards stood at Rs 6.8 lakh crore while transaction value of credit cards stood at Rs 7.1 lakh crore, registering YoY growth of 21% and 33% respectively.

The data showed UPI’s average ticket size remained Rs 1,600 in 2019 which indicates the rise in number of consumers preferring UPI for making small ticket size transactions.

The state-wise detailed transactions data for all 10 federal bodies was, however, not reported by the company. But it said Karnataka retained its second position for the second year in a row. The list included southern states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala.