Gone are days where mobile phones were used just to make calls, send messages, and take photographs. An increasing number of us are using our phones for financial transactions. According to the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) annual report for 2017-18, mobile banking services witnessed a growth of 92 per cent and 13 per cent in volume and value terms, respectively. The number of registered customers rose by 54 per cent to 251 million at end-March 2018 from 163 million at end-March 2017.
In general, the share of electronic payments in the total volume of retail payments has gone up. The share of electronic transactions in the total volume of retail payments increased to 92.6 per cent in 2017-18, up from 88.9 per cent in the previous year with a corresponding reduction in the share of paper-based clearing instruments from 11.1 per cent in 2016-17 to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18.
Volume and value of the payment and settlement systems grew 44.6 per cent and 11.9 per cent, respectively, in 2017-18.
Growth in electronic payments
According to the apex bank’s annual report, here is the growth witnessed in various electronic modes of payments:
- The Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system handled 124 million transactions valued at Rs 1,167 trillion in 2017-18, up from 108 million transactions valued at Rs 982 trillion in the previous year. At the end of March 2018, the RTGS facility was available through 1,37,924 branches of 194 banks.
- The NEFT system handled 1.9 billion transactions valued at around Rs 172 trillion in 2017-18, up from 1.6 billion transactions valued at Rs 120 trillion in the previous year, registering a growth of 20 per cent in terms of volume and 43.5 per cent in terms of value. At the end of March 2018, the NEFT facility was available through 1,40,339 branches of 192 banks, in addition to a large number of business correspondent (BC) outlets.
- During 2017-18, the number of transactions carried out through credit cards and debit cards was 1.4 billion and 3.3 billion, respectively.
- Prepaid payment instruments (PPIs) recorded a volume of about 3.5 billion transactions, valued at Rs 1,416 billion.
Payments’ infrastructure
The number of Point of Sale (POS) terminals deployed increasing by 24 per cent from 2.53 million in 2016-17 to 3.14 million in 2017-18. However, during the same period, the ATMs deployed witnessed a marginal decline from 2,22,475 to 2,22,247.
[“Source-economictimes”]
