I haven't carried a wallet anywhere in India this month, says Jay Kotak

Jay Kotak is the co-business head of the Kotak811 digital bank (Image credit: @jay_kotakone/Twitter)

Jay Kotak, co-head of Kotak 811, the digital arm of Kotak Mahindra Bank, and the son of the private bank's MD and CEO Uday Kotak, has not carried a wallet in a month. He didn't feel the need for it.

Jay Kotak has been using his phone to make payments, big and small.

“I have not carried a wallet anywhere in India this month. Just my phone,” Kotak said on social media platform X, which was until recently known as Twitter.

All his payments were done via Unified Payments Interface (UPI), the home-grown instant real-time payments system.

“Seamless payments and verified ID are substantive enablers for even further progress. Be it street snacks, medicines, restaurants and even tips, all the payments are done through UPI. The average UPI transaction cost is near 0 compared to around one percent for cards,” Kotak said.

A decent smartphone and internet connectivity is all you need, he said.

“A phone can be bought under Rs 10,000, with high-speed data. Plus, there is good network penetration across India. Also, all ID and documentation is digital via digilocker,” Kotak said. DigiLocker is a government initiative to allow citizens to store the digital versions of various documents such as driver’s licence or Aadhaar.

With growing internet penetration, digital payments have been taken off in a big way.

The UPI registered 996 crore transactions in July, an increase of 6.6 percent from the previous month, according to data released by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). The total transaction amount in the same period rose to Rs 15.34 lakh crore, NPCI, which developed UPI, said.

Also read: Digital payments across country jumped in March 2023 on YoY basis: RBI data

The Reserve Bank of India's bulletin on June 23 said UPI was expected to account for 90 percent of the retail digital transaction volume in the next five years.

“UPI is expected to account for 90 percent share of the total retail digital transactions volume in the next five years, growing from 75.6 percent in the fiscal year (FY) 2022-2023,” the bulletin said.

The RBI's Digital Payments Index (RBI-DPI), which measures the growth of online payments in India, showed a 13.24 percent growth in the year ending March 2023, indicating a strong trend in online transactions.

In March 2023, the index recorded a score of 395.57, up from 377.46 in September 2022 and 349.30 in March 2022, representing a four-fold jump from 2018, the RBI report on July 27 said.