India Post Payments Bank Clocks INR 38,500 Cr Financial Transactions Amid Pandemic

Even as cashless transactions register phenomenal growth, data revealed by government-backed India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) has revealed that it is fast gaining growth.

IPPB which launched in 2018 has said that it has a total customer base of 3.6 Cr and completed over INR 38,500 Cr financial transactions till September 15. IPPB leverages the reach of India Post’s 1.55 lakh post office branches to provide banking and financial service to people in rural areas.

“The Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AePS) service has been a game-changer of sorts in expanding access to banking and financial services for millions of poor and unbanked at the last mile with cash being delivered at their doorstep,” said Easwaran Venkateswaran, interim MD & CEO, India Post Payments Bank. 

IPPB said in a press note that in terms of number of Aadhaar-enabled payment system (AePS) transactions, the top three circles were Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Gujarat. While Uttar Pradesh recorded around 61.7 lakh transactions, Bihar and Gujarat have totalled to approximately 20 lakh and nearly 16.9 lakh transactions respectively.

IPPB claims that Aadhaar-based transactions have helped them provide doorstep banking. It added that DBT (Direct Benefit Transfer) under PMGKY (Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana) were disbursed by the local post office through AePS on IPPB platform.

India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) on Friday (October 2) announced that it has attained a total customer base of 3.6 Cr and completed over INR 38,500 Cr financial transactions till September 15.

IPPB launched its operations just two years ago. Last year in August, it had crossed the milestone of one crore customers, the bank said in a release.

During lockdown, AePS doubled to 11.3 Mn even as digital payments dropped significantly. It witnessed a spike in AePS payment due to the government using AePS to transfer funds of various welfare and benefit schemes.

Besides India Post, other payments banks that are currently operational in India include Jio Payments Bank, Airtel Payments Bank, Paytm Payments Bank, and Fino Payments Bank.

Paytm Payments Bank had revealed in June 2020 that its profit grew 55% from INR 19.2 Cr in FY19 to INR 29.8 Cr in FY20. 

Meanwhile, in the financial year 2020, Airtel Payments Bank’s revenues rose 87% to INR 474 Cr, driven by surge in digital payments, money transfer and offtake of new services, according to its MD and CEO Anubrata Biswas.  

Earlier this year, Airtel Payments Bank had also launched a network of 250K Aadhaar-enabled payment system (AePS) banking points across India to ease access to digital banking services.

Meanwhile, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) while releasing Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions for September had revealed AePS transactions worth INR 17,351.66 Cr were made in September.

UPI transactions have seen an uptick amid pandemic. The NPCI announced that INR 3,29,027 Cr was transferred through 1.80 Bn UPI transactions in September 2020. This is a 10.3% hike compared to August, when NPCI recorded 1.61 Bn UPI transactions for INR 2,98,307 Cr.

According to Razorpay, UPI had also emerged as the most popular digital payment method with 43% of the total transactions between March 24 to April 23, when the lockdown was announced.

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