Credit Cards More Than Double in 5 Yrs While Debit Cards Stable

Update: 2025-01-28 16:00 GMT
Credit Cards More Than Double in 5 Yrs While Debit Cards Stable
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Mumbai: Retail digital payments in India have grown from 162 crore transactions in the financial year 2012-13 to over 16,416 crore transactions in the financial year 2023-24, around a 100-fold increase over 12 years, said the central bank’s “Payment Systems Report.”

The share of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) in India's digital payments has surged from 34 per cent in 2019 to an impressive 83 per cent in 2024, with a remarkable CAGR (cumulative average growth rate) of 74 per cent over the last five years said the Reserve Bank of India’s report.

In contrast, the share of other payment systems like RTGS, NEFT, IMPS, credit cards, debit cards, etc in digital payments volume declined from 66 per cent to 17 per cent during the same period, the report stated.

UPI has been the most significant contributor to the growth of digital payments in India due to its usefulness and ease of use, said the report. At a macro level, the volume of UPI transactions increased from 375 crore in 2018 to 17,221 crore in 2024, whereas the total value of transactions surged from Rs 5.86 lakh crore in 2018 to Rs 246.83 lakh crore in 2024.

Interestingly, at the end of December 2024, the number of credit cards has more than doubled to around 10.80 crore as compared to December 2019, when there were 5.53 crore cards in circulation. In contrast, the number of debit cards have remained relatively stable, with a marginal increase from 80.53 crore in December 2019 to slightly more than 99.09 crore in December 2024.

While the use of debit cards has declined, credit cards have grown more than 15 percent on a year-on-year basis in recent years. With effect from January 1, 2019, RBI has mandated the use of only EMV Chip and PIN-based debit and credit cards. During CY 2024, there were 447.23 crore and 173.90 crore payment transactions worth Rs 20.37 lakh crore and Rs 5.16 lakh crore through credit and debit cards respectively.

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