Coronavirus pandemic | Digital payments fall up to 68% in April

NEFT down 34%, RTGS more than 50% and debit cards 68% compared to March, RBI data shows.

Pratik Bhakta

June 11, 2020 / 18:52 IST

Use finance options to your advantage | Learn how to use credit and debt. Picking up a property mortgage that you can definitely pay off and then earn more out of whether from rental or sale is one such bet. They key is to know your limits and plan accordingly. For credit cards, pay the balance and earn cash backs or points – whatever bank’s terms are. These can then be used for other purchases. (Image Source: Reuters)

Digital payments--from inter-bank fund transfers to card transactions –fell 34 to 68 percent in April, data sourced from the RBI shows, underscoring the drastic drop in economic activity in the month India shut down completely to stonewall the coronavirus.

In some cases, the transactions dropped to 2012 levels when the country was still recovering from the fallout of the 2008-09 global recession.

The only exception was Unified Payments Interface (UPI), the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI)-run peer-to-peer payment system, which saw a smaller drop.

From 124 crore transactions in March, UPI dropped to less than 100 crore in April. It again picked up in May to record 123 crore transactions.

The National Electronic Fund Transfer, better known as NEFT, another interbank payment mechanism run by the RBI, recorded a 34 percent drop to 17 crore transactions in April against 26 crore in the previous month.

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

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