Mobile payments in the country surged by 163 per cent in 2019, and are expected to gain further traction due to the current concerns over currency. In fact, card and mobile payments exceeded cash withdrawals at ATMs for the first time last year, according to a new report by S&P Global Market Intelligence.

“India’s push towards cashless payments accelerated in 2019, as card and mobile payments as a percentage of GDP rose to 20 per cent in the quarter ended December 31, 2019,” said S&P Global Market Intelligence’s 2020 India Mobile Payments Market Report.

While mobile payments rose 163 per cent to $287 billion in 2019, Point of Sale (PoS) transactions through debit and credit cards, including online and in apps, increased by 24 per cent to $204 billion, it said.

“High growth rates in cashless payments seen in recent years are unlikely to repeat amid an economic slowdown due to the novel coronavirus pandemic,” said Sampath Sharma Nariyanuri, Fintech Analyst at S&P Global Market Intelligence, adding that it expects mobile payments to be more resilient and to gain a bigger lead over card payments due to the current social distancing measures and concerns over usage of cash and plastic.

The report revealed that card purchases and Unified Payments Interface (UPI) mobile payments represented only 21 per cent of the $781 billion in-store transactions in 2019. Google Pay and PhonePe led UPI payment apps, with the two processing 70 crore such transactions or two-thirds of all such payments last year.

Indian fintechs’ funding

Significantly, S&P Global Market Intelligence, in the recently-published first-quarter APAC Fintech Funding Report, also said that India-based fintechs attracted the most funding in the region, raising a total of $543.4 million or 42 per cent of the total funding in the first quarter in 2020.

“Go Digit General Insurance was the top-funded fintech in India,” it added.