COVID 19 | Payment transactions go up by 53 per cent

In the past 12 months, there has been a 53 per cent increase in the volume of payments transactions despite the COVID 19 pandemic. The CAGR for the past five years has been 42 per cent, as stated by P Vasudevan, Chief General Manager of Payment and Settlement Systems at Reserve Bank of India, said there was an increase of 28 per cent in the same period. The last 12 months have seen a lot of growth compared to the last five years.

We process 21.79 crore payments transactions on a daily basis. It is heartening to remember that in December last year the RTGS was operational 24 x 7 x 365. There have been many initiatives undertaken to capitalise on this. The payment systems like NACH, Bharat Bill Payment, were able to settle on weekends. The number of settlements in a week has gone up by 200, bringing down the credit and settlement risks in the ecosystem, said Vasudevan.

The Digital Money Conference at the PCI was centered around the theme of Innovation to Scale and attended by 2,500 delegates over 30 sessions. It discusses how innovation enables payments stakeholders to scale up digital payments while ensuring existing operations perform consistently and sustainably.

PCI was founded under the aegis of IAMAI in 2013 and caters to the needs of the digital payments industry. It was formed to represent the multiple regulated non-banking payment industry players and address industry issues. The council aims to create a less-cash society by promoting the payments industry.