A year since demonetisation: How digital transactions became popular across the country?

The government's big push to boost digital payments has actually gathered some popularity across the nation a year after demonetisation.

Data from the Reserve Bank of India's electronic payment system indicated that digital transactions have tripled and quadrupled in volume and value across various modes from wallets to cards and interbank transfers. Digital transactions have grown to 13.5 percent from Rs 109.82 trillion in August to Rs 124.69 trillion in September. However, the highest was in the month of March at Rs 149.59 trillion.

Based on the facts available, mobile wallets saw the highest percentage increase in the value of transactions among these methods.

The digital payment systems commonly used in day to day transactions are credit and debit cards, mobile wallets, mobile banking and unified payments interface (UPI) which has seen a reasonable pick up with the government promoter BHIM mobile app (payment app) continuing to show a healthy growth in volumes.

Meanwhile, according to a report, the use of debit card has been weak and the total debit card transactions have seen a modest decline -- both in terms of value and volume. And the reason behind the value of transactions through debit cards have decreased is mainly because of the reason that most of the ATMs which is still running dry and also due to high denominations like Rs 2000 note which is only available in some of the ATMs. On the other hand,

Ever since, the demonetisation was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 8, 2016, people switched to digital wallet or credit/debit card to cope with the cash crunch. While the digital transactions were steadily growing over the years, the demonetisation just gave an additional leg up.

The central government had on November 8, 2016, announced the demonetisation of the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes.

OneIndia News