World Payments Report Lauds Demonetisation, Says It Boosted Growth In Worldwide Online Transactions

The latest World Payments Report released by Capgemini and BNP Paribas, noted that Global non-cash transactions grew at 10.1 per cent in 2016 with Asia being the chief driver of this growth. While the adoption of mobile payments in India grew by 33.2 per cent, it increased at a slower pace, at 25.8 per cent in China.

The report attributed the higher-than-expected rise in non-cash transactions in 2016 to the Indian government's demonetisation program. Debit cards contributed to the highest growth of 76.2 per cent. The report also praised the government’s financial inclusion measure that led to the higher adoption of debit and prepaid cards. NDA government's flagship scheme, Jan Dhan Yojana, provided a free Rupay debit card to millions of previously unbanked Indian citizens and brought them into the digital payments fold for the first time.

The report goes on to predict that India is set to overtake Australia by 2018 and Canada by 2019, in terms of growth rates of non-cash transactions.

Interestingly, while the use of cheques dropped in countries like South Korea and China by more than 20 per cent, cheque usage in India increased by 10.1 per cent in the wake of demonetisation. The report also lauded the efforts of National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) for bringing digital payments into the mainstream.