Cashless payments grew massively during Financial Year (FY) 2016-17, both in terms of value and volume, revealed a Reserve Bank of India (RBI) report.
As per RBI’s report on ‘Trends and Progress of Banking in India (2016- 2017)’, around 89 per cent of the cashless retail payments in terms of volume and 63 per cent of the payments in terms of value were done via cards and electronic modes during 2016-17.
It further said that the transactions performed through prepaid instruments (PPI), comprising of PPI cards (mobile prepaid instruments, gift cards, social benefit cards, foreign travel cards and corporate cards), and mobile wallets doubled in FY17 compared to FY16.
The volume of PPIs surged to 1,964 million in March 2017 from 748 million in 2016. In terms of value, PPIs nearly doubled to Rs 85,000 crore at end-March 2017 (Rs 46,000 crore in the previous year).
“The withdrawal of high-denomination SBNs (specified bank notes) provided a boost to the objective of a less-cash society as people shifted to card-based transactions and various modes of electronic payments,” the RBI report said.
In addition to this, Unified Payments Interface (UPI) also saw 17.9 million transactions worth Rs 6,950 crore.
