Digital payments will be a trillion-dollar market in the next five years: NITI Aayog

New report reveals that growth momentum of digital payments in volume and value sustained post demonetisation, and was accompanied by 'spectacular growth' in new products like UPI.

The digital payments market In India is all set to grow to $1 trillion by 2023 led by growth in mobile payments, which are slated to rise from $10 billion in 2017-18 to $190 billion by 2023, NITI Aayog said.

These estimations are based on a Credit Suisse study and have been mentioned in NITI Aayog’s report, Digital Payment: Trends, Issues and Opportunities.

Through its report, NITI Aayog said the reason for digital payments is the growth momentum of digital payments in terms of volume and value sustained post demonetisation; growth in new payment products like UPI; and key initiatives undertaken by the RBI.

The booklet defined that in terms of volume, growth of digital payments during the year was much higher than the trend growth rate during 2011-16. Further, growth in total retail payments in value terms has seen a three-fold increase than the trend rate of the last five years.

Also, the Unified Payments Service (UPI) and Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) segments in terms of volume registered spectacular growth during 2017- 18. UPI despite being a new product in the payment segment, has shown great adoption rate among consumers and merchants.

The analysis of growth trends is based on both MeitY and RBI data. While MeitY data provides volume data in public domain, RBI provides both volume and value data in public domain.

Just last month, UPI transactions stood at 246.37 million, with a total of Rs 40,834 crore transacted through the payment system. This is a healthy 30 percent increase from the May numbers.

Further, according to the recent RBI bulletin, the total number of card transactions stood at approximately 1.24 billion as of May. This year, 1.1 billion of the transactions happened over debit cards.

Total mobile wallet transactions stood at approximately 326 million in the month of May, a growth from the 279 million transactions registered in the month of April.