Digital Payments Made Up 99.7% Of All Transactions In 2024, Says RBI Report

On volume and value, the proportion of digital payment transactions in the payments system in calendar year 2024 was 99.7 per cent and 97.5 per cent respectively and this has persisted in the first half of calendar year 2025, according to a report issued by the Reserve Bank on Thursday.

The half yearly Payment System Report that was released by the RBI in June 2025 stated that the payments ecosystem in India has experienced phenomenal growth over the past years.

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Indian payments environment is a vernacular of payment structures tailored to meet various requirements of consumers both in terms of paper based (cheque) payment systems and electronic payment systems.

Online payment systems are NEFT, IMPS, RTGS, NACH, debit cards, credit cards, prepaid payment systems, and UPI.

It was also observed in the report that there was an upwards trend in all the categories, except paper-based instruments. The cheques contribute 2.3 per cent of total transactions in value.

The payment transactions increased by 3, 248 crore in CY 2019 to 20849 crore in CY 2024 in terms of volume and by 1775 lakh crore to 2830 lakh crore in terms of value during the period respectively.

Transaction volume made 12,549 crore in the half-year ended June 2025 and this is equivalent to 1,572 lakh crore, as per the report.

The entire growth in payment can be solely due to the digital payment transactions.

CY 2019 CY 2019 digital payments represented an approximation of 96.7 per cent of the transaction volume and 95.5 per cent of the transaction value of all transaction.

Regarding the volume, the highest share was 85 per cent in terms of UPI (Unified Payments Interface). (H1 2025). It contributed a humble nine per cent in terms of value in the same period.

At the same time period, although the Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system had the largest share in terms of value at 69 per cent, it recorded the smallest share at 0.1 per cent, in terms of volume.

Conversely, the UPI transactions have seen a larger share of volume but lower share of value, due to a much larger share in the number of small value transactions.

In terms of RTGS transactions, the volume grew from 14.8 crore in CY 2019 to 29.5 crore transactions in CY 2024, while in value terms from Rs. 1,388.7 lakh crore to Rs. 1,938.2 lakh crore.

In CY 2025, RTGS processed 16.1 crore transactions with a value of Rs 1,079.2 lakh crorein H1 CY 2025, showing continued growth and use.

In H1 of CY 2025, it has already grown to 490.5 crore transactions worth Rs 237 lakh crore, suggesting continued growth and acceptance of NEFT, the report provided.

During the period from CY 2019-2024, NEFT transactions grew more than 3 times in volume, from 262.2 crore to 926.8 crore.

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However, during that period, the value grew from Rs 232.9 lakh crore to Rs 432.8 lakh crore.

The volume of UPI transactions rose significantly from 1,079 crore in CY 2019 to 17,221 crore in CY 2024.

The value of UPI transactions grew from Rs 18.4 lakh crore in CY 2019 to Rs 246.8 lakh crore in CY 2024.

In H1 CY 2025, UPI transactions totaled 10,637 crore, amounting to Rs 143.3 lakh crore. The lower average ticket size shows UPI is meant facilitate primarily lower-value transactions.

We have also seen credit card transactions grow over period of time.

The transaction volume grew from 208.7 crore in 2019 to 447.2 crore in 2024 and the value increased from Rs 7.1 lakh crore to Rs 20.4 lakh crore. 266.3 crore transactions occurred in H1 2025 and the value is Rs 11.1 lakh crore.

Credit cards remain in the hands of private sector banks and we have seen increased focus on digital and co-branded products for customers, with their portion increasing from 65.8 percent in June 2020 to 70.8 percent in June 2025.

Public sector banks (PSBs) have seen growth during the same timeframe changing from 22.5 percent to 24.1 percent.

Foreign banks share has shrunk significantly over the same timeframe going from 11.7 percent to 4.1 percent as the outstanding cards shrank from 67 lakh to 45 lakh for the same timeframe. Small Finance Banks had issued 10 lakh cards as of June 2025.

There has been a decline in numbers and values of debit card transactions since 2019. Nevertheless, the report notes that both instruments continue to face increased competition from digital alternatives.

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