With the Central government and the Reserve Bank of India urging people to use digital payments during the current coronavirus pandemic, payment gateway Razorpay has revealed that digital spending rose 10 per cent on its platform between middle of February and now.
UPI (19.6 per cent), netbanking (11.5 per cent) and wallets (10.3 per cent) have become the top three modes of payments in this period.
The company has released insights on digital payment trends in the current situation, which reveal that while spending on online travel booking has fallen, grocery purchases are on the rise.
The current situation has led to a slump of 30 per cent in online travel bookings, it said on Thursday.
“The travel advisories have led to a drastic drop in online travel spending in India. In 2019, according to Statista, the travel sector contributed the highest to online payments in India with a 40 per cent share,” it noted.
Similarly, online spends on the hospitality sector fell by 12 per cent during the period while typically typically, travel and hospitality account for approximately 10 per cent of transactions on its platform.
Other segments
Meanwhile, online grocery shopping grew by 9 per cent and government and utility bill payments increased by 30 per cent in this period as more and more people have stopped stepping out of their homes for non-essential work.
Mutual fund payments saw the highest growth of 33 per cent in this period.
Harshil Mathur, CEO and Co-founder, Razorpay, confirmed that there is an increase in demand for digital payments across a few sectors such as grocery, e-commerce and utility bills, given the social isolation.
According to Razorpay, the number of online transactions has increased in cities such as Ahmedabad by as much as 11 per cent, followed by Hyderabad by 7 per cent and Pune by 5 percent.
However, cities such as Bangalore and Delhi, which had otherwise registered an upward growth in digital payments, have seen a drop of 3.2 per cent and 2.6 per cent, respectively.
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