We have seen retail digital payments in India growing from 162 crore transactions in FY2012-13 to over 14,726 crore transactions in 2023-24 (till February 2024) i.e., approximately 90-fold increase over 12 years, said RBI governor while addressing the Digital Payments Awareness Week organised by the Reserve Bank of India. Over the years, we have not only navigated through the fast-evolving technological innovations but also played a pivotal role, as a catalyst, in developing one of the most modern payment systems in the world, be they large value, retail or fast payments. This has been made possible by nurturing diverse payment systems in the country, namely, the bill payments, merchant payments, vendor payments, transit payments, or recurring payments.
Today, India accounts for nearly 46% of the worlds digital transactions (as per 2022 data). The extraordinary growth in digital payments is also evident in the Reserve Bank's Digital Payment Index, which has witnessed a four-fold rise in the last five years. The flagship of our payment systems, the UPI, has become the most talked about fast payment system not only in India but across the world. It is the biggest contributor to the growth of digital payments in India.
The share of UPI in digital payments has reached close to 80 per cent in 2023. At a macro level, the volume of UPI transactions increased from 43 crore in CY-2017 to 11,761 crore in CY-2023. Apart from being a user-friendly interface and facilitating QR code-based payments, the UPI has evolved to include advanced functionalities such as offline payments through near field communication (NFC) technology (UPI Lite X), payments through feature phones (UPI 123Pay), AI based conversational payments (hello! UPI), etc.
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