At 48 billion, India accounted for the largest number of worldwide real-time transactions in 2021 , almost three times that of nearest challenger China (18 billion), and 6.5 times greater than the US, Canada, UK, France and Germany combined, according to a report by ACI Worldwide.
For India, the growing acceptance of UPI-based mobile payment apps and QR code payments among merchants, combined with the increased use of digital payments during the Covid-19 pandemic helped real-time payments secure 31.3% of total payments transaction volume in 2021.
With consumers leapfrogging traditional payment cards and increasingly abandoning cash for mobile-based real-time payments the country’s real-time payments share of total global payments volume is poised to soar to over 70% by 2026.
“For India specifically, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research, real-time payments resulted in estimated cost savings of $12.6 billion for Indian businesses and consumers in 2021 – which helped to unlock $16.4 billion of economic output which represents 0.56% of the country’s GDP or the output of approximately 2.5 million workers,” said Ankur Saxena, country leader, India and South Asia, ACI Worldwide.