Online payments see considerable increase in India: Study

Indians are now moving away from traditional methods of payments including cash and card payments to choose alternative forms like payment wallets, a study conducted by global financial services firm FIS said.

As per this study, over 37% prefer using alternative payment methods other than PayPal. Another 2% use PayPal. The use of credit cards, debit cards and bank transfers come after payment applications. Google Pay and Paytm are two of the most used payment applications used by Indians.

The same study suggests that 40% people used wallets in 2020 and that can go up to 47% in 2024. The findings of this study are similar to that of the finding of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and People Research on India’s Consumer Economy (PRICE) study on digital payments.

This study suggests that one-third of households in India use digital payments and this number can go up to 50%. In a press statement, NPCI-PRICE said, “The RuPay card volumes have also witnessed a rise not only in urban areas, but also in remote PIN codes that had hitherto remained silent.”

The NPCI-PRICE study goes on to state that during the lockdown 90% of low-income families that are eligible for DBT have started using this form of money transfer. While one out of two rich households in India uses digital payments, one out of four poor households uses this method.

So far as the FIS report goes, the study shows that India along with Malaysia and Indonesia are high-growth countries and below China, Vietnam, and South Korea.

The FIS study also states that the future trend is 'buy now, pay later' Bank transfers are slowly declining.

However, the RBI’s data tells a different story. The central bank’s February bulletin says that while digital payments on a whole have increased by 10% in December 2020 over December 2019, payment through wallets has declined by 15% in December 2020 from December 2019.