Digital payments account for 99.7% transactions by volume in ‘24: RBI

Digital payment transactions accounted for 99.7 per cent in terms of volume and 97.5 per cent in value in the payments system during calendar year 2024, and the trend continued in the first half of 2025, according to a Reserve Bank report released on Thursday.

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‘The payments ecosystem in India has witnessed remarkable growth in recent years, said the RBI's half-yearly Payment System Report, June 2025.

‘The payments landscape in India consists of a bouquet of payment systems designed to cater to the diverse needs of users, which include paper-based instruments (cheques) as well as digital payment systems.

Digital payment systems include NEFT, IMPS, RTGS, NACH, debit and credit cards, prepaid payment instruments, and UPI.

‘The report also showed an increasing trend across all categories, except for paper-based instruments. Cheques account for 2.3 per cent of the total transactions in terms of value.

In terms of volume, the payment transactions grew from 3,248 crore in CY 2019 to 20,849 crore in CY 2024, and in terms of value, they rose from Rs 1,775 lakh crore to Rs 2,830 lakh crore during this period.

In the half-year ended June 2025, transaction volume was 12,549 crore, amounting to Rs 1,572 lakh crore, the report said.

Almost all of the growth in payments is attributable to digital payment transactions.

In CY 2019, digital payments accounted for approximately 96.7 per cent of the total payment transactions by volume and 95.5 per cent by value.