Digital payments made up 99.7% transactions in volume in 2024: 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.

The payments ecosystem in India had 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 revealed.

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. In terms of volume, UPI (Unified Payments Interface) accounted for the largest share at 85 per cent during the first half of 2025 (H1 2025). It accounted for a modest nine per cent in terms of value during the same period.