India trumps China, US with over 25 billion digital transactions in 2020

India witnessed the highest number of real-time online transactions in 2020, trumping China and United States.

At least 25.5 billion real-time transactions were recorded in India over the last year, followed by 15.7 billion in China, 6 billion in South Korea, 5.2 billion in Thailand, followed by the United Kingdom with 2.8 billion transactions.

US barely made it to the top 10 list at number 9 nine with 1.2 billion transactions.

For instant payments, India’s volume share was 15.6 per cent. For other electronic payments, it stood at 22.9 per cent, based on the report released by ACI Worldwide, a UK-based payments system company. Even then, paper-based payments remain important in India, with a 61.4 per cent share.

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But predictions suggest that this will change by 2025. Instant payments volume is set to increase to over 37 per cent, while the share of other electronic payments is likely to grow to over 34 per cent.

Naturally, the share of paper-based transactions is set to decline below 28 per cent. Real-time payments’ share is expected to exceed 50 per cent by 2024.

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Pre-Paid Instruments (PPI) and the Universal Payment Interface (UPI) have helped make digitisation mainstream in India.

UPI transactions have continued to grow in the country on a month-on-month basis. In March 2021, the value was up to INR 4.25 lakh crore from INR 4.25 lakh crore in February, based on data released by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).