Nearly 400 Mn Indians Use Digital Payment Systems: Nandan Nilekani

Nearly 400 Mn people are using digital payment systems today, said Nandan Nilekani, chairman of Infosys and founding chairman of UIDAI. 

Addressing the Tia Summit 2022 at Bengaluru, Nilekani said, “Nearly 260 Mn users are deploying UPI whilst 150 Mn users are utilising Aadhar-enabled payment systems to withdraw money from bank accounts.”

Nilekani said that India’s digital payment system including unified payment interface (UPI) and Aadhar-enabled payment system has caused a dramatic shift in consumer behaviour and usage.

Nilekani noted that UPI has become a ubiquitous payment system for India thus, being used by 260 Mn users in the country.

Talking about small-sized companies in India, Nilekani said that small businesses can utilise digital transactions for assessing sales, spendings and remuneration (offered to employees), among others. The companies’ digital transactions can further be shared with banks and other allied lending institutions to avail credit. 

Emphasising on the data usage in India, he said, “1 Bn people in the country can use their data while 20 Mn businesses can use their own data. This ability of people to use their own data is called data empowerment.” 

During the session, Nilekani also spoke about other government-backed digital platforms including Aadhar-enabled payment, DigiLocker and e-KYC (electronic KYC). 

He said that the Aadhar-enabled payment system and DigiLocker are currently being used by nearly 1.3 Bn and 120 Mn people respectively. Besides, the Aadhar-enabled payment system clocks 50 Mn authentications while e-KYC records 5 Mn authentications on a daily basis. 

Taking into account the NPCI’s data about UPI, in the month of July, a total of 628 Cr UPI transactions worth INR 10.63 Lakh Cr were processed.

During that month, the number of UPI transactions and their volume increased by 4.8% and 7.7% month-on-month against 586 Cr transactions worth INR 10.14 Lakh Cr clocked in June.

Besides, it has to be noted that RuPay credit cards will soon be linked with UPI by this month, as per NPCI affirmations made in July.

Earlier in July, the NPCI had stated that it was looking to start linking RuPay credit cards with the UPI. 

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