
India’s digital payments ecosystem witnessed a significant surge in the second half of 2024, driven by Unified Payments Interface (UPI), mobile payments and cards, according to Worldline India’s Digital Payments Report 2H 2024.
This was possible due to the robust growth in digital payments infrastructure. The UPI QR (Quick Response) codes through which users conduct their digital transactions using their mobile phones touched 63.34 crore at the end of December 2024, while PoS terminals increased by 23 per cent to 10 million during this period, the report states.
UPI saw strong growth in both person-to-person (P2P) and person-to-merchant (P2M) payments. P2P transactions increased by 30 per cent, rising from 27.04 billion in the second half of 2023 to 35.21 billion in the same period of 2024. The total value of these transactions also grew 26 per cent, reaching Rs 93.84 lakh crore.
P2M transactions grew even faster, with volume rising by 50 per cent to 58.03 billion and the total value increasing by 43 per cent to Rs 36.35 lakh crore.
Card payments in the second half of 2024 grew by 11 per cent to 4.1 billion transactions, mainly driven by a 36 per cent jump in credit card usage, which reached 2.42 billion transactions.
However, debit card transactions dropped by 29 per cent to 0.82 billion, while prepaid card transactions rose by 11 per cent to 0.86 billion.