Bharat Connect payment volume doubles to 2.2 billion in 2024 on surge in credit card payments

Bharat Connect

Bill payment volume through Bharat Connect almost doubled to 2.2 billion in 2024 from the previous calendar year. The value of bills paid through the platform grew almost three times as the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) mandate to route all credit card bill payments through Bharat Connect took effect in July.

From less than 10 percent of the value of bill payments in January, the share of credit card bills rose to 62 percent by November. The ratio is fairly high since the average bill value of the credit card is close to Rs 16,000 a month in Bharat Connect.

A total of 40 million credit card bills were paid through Bharat Connect with a transaction value of more than Rs 63,000 crore in November, the latest data available on the platform's website shows.

In January 2024, the volume stood at 2.2 million transactions worth around Rs 2,800 crore. There has been an 18 times growth in volume and 23 times in value.

Bharat Connect, earlier Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS), is the platform run by NPCI Bharat Billpay Limited, a fully owned subsidiary of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), established to digitise and bring all utility bill payments under a single platform.

Since July, the central bank has made it mandatory for all credit card bill payments to be routed through the Bharat Connect. However, this does not affect settlements made through banking channels (bank websites or apps) or standing instructions (SI) for automatic deductions.

On average, credit card spending is around Rs 1.8 lakh crore in a month, data available on the RBI website shows, with more than 10 crore active cards in circulation. This indicates that Bharat Connect has around 40 percent market share in volume and around a third in terms of value.

Most of the major card issuers are already on the Bharat Connect platform and the bill payments are often facilitated through consumer payment apps such as CRED, PhonePe, Google Pay and Paytm.

In 2023, Bharat Connect reported around 1.3 billion transactions worth around Rs 2.65 lakh crore. This increased to 2.2 billion transactions worth around Rs 7.7 lakh crore in 2024.

While electricity continues to be the largest utility payment by volume at 29 percent in November 2024, this was more than 36 percent in January. Much of this is due to the surge in credit card bill payments on the platform since July.

The credit card bill payments comprised 17 percent of the volume in November, compared to less than 2 percent in January 2024.

The third and fourth largest bill payment categories Fastag and loan repayment saw a good growth their share came down too.