India’s Digital Transactions Revolution

In 2021, India recorded 48 billion real-time digital transactions, 40% of the global total. It is also three times the levels in China, and more than six times the numbers of the US, Canada, UK, France, and Germany combined.

Starting in 2015, millions of Indians have been drawn to the convenience of digital payments. They transact by pointingaiming their screens at QR codes everywhere — from vegetable shops and tea stalls to five-star dining rooms and hilltop cottages. 

Every hour, nearly 5.5 million digital payments are made for shopping, salary, rent, and even tips. 

For real-time payments to take off, it was necessary for connectivity to improve. A boost to internet penetration came in 2015 when a government plan to create a ‘Digital India’, or a digitally enabled economy, was announced.  

Online infrastructure spread far and wide. The total internet user base swelled by 530 million in 2015 to reach 830 million by 2021. At the last count, 43% of India was online.

In 2016, the National Payments Corporation of India launched UPI (unified payments interface), a gateway for instant inter-bank transactions, and BHIM, a real-time transactions app. These were simpler to use than the older method of electronic fund transfer.  

UPI expanded rapidly. It became available offline too. 

Discounts made data access affordable even for every section of the population. Launched in September 2016, Reliance Jio, a popular Indian telecommunications company, gave users 4GB of free data per day, plus low-cost smartphones. 

Other providers also started offering cheap high-speed internet. India soon led the world in low-priced data, at $0.7 per GB on average. This boosted data usage: Indian users consume some 14.1 GB per month on average.