India’s FinTech vehicle is moving on the wheels of financial inclusion and trust. There is no doubt that a new type of revolution is taking shape in the country with the combination of finance and technology. Rich or poor, the FinTech revolution is bringing a pleasant change in the life of everyone. Financial transactions have started getting faster. Intermediaries are vanishing from the marketplace. The common man is also able to take full advantage of the facilities of Fintech like digital payments, Paytm wallet etc. Inaugurating the Infiniti Forum, a fintech event of the International Financial Services Centers Authority (IFSCA), Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that our digital public infrastructure solutions can improve the lives of people around the world.
India has changed the course of banking with 43 crore Jan Dhan accounts in the last seven years. So far 69 crore RuPay cards have been issued through which 1.3 billion transactions were done last year. About 4.2 billion transactions were made possible last month through the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). Businesses in India upload nearly 30 crore invoices to the GST (Goods and Services Tax) portal every month, which involves payments of more than $12 billion. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, around 15 lakh railway tickets are booked online every day. Last year, 1.3 billion transactions were made possible through FASTag. If money is the lifeblood of the economy, technology is its vehicle. It can also be said that the birds of money fly with the wings of technology.
Our country had the highest dependence on ATM machines till the year 2014. If you wanted to buy anything, you had to pay by withdrawing cash from the ATM machine. Due to the accessibility of the Internet, gradually the trend of mobile banking and net banking started increasing. Post demonetisation (note bandi), ATM usage declined at an annual rate of 10 per cent since the year 2017. In place of cash transactions, the trend of payment through mobile wallet started. According to data from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the trend of mobile banking picked up due to the lockdown last year and the share of mobile banking in the total transactions from bank accounts till March 2021 was 65.8 per cent. ATM usage declined to 15.9 per cent and mobile wallets slipped to the third position with 10.4 per cent. ATM card swap payments reduced to less than 8 per cent.
Due to the Covid19 epidemic, many good changes have been seen in the economy. Indeed the pandemic intensified the winds of change. Most of the transactions have started happening on digital or say online mode, which has made it easier for the Reserve Bank of India to keep a tab on the condition and direction of the entire economy of the nation. Now the hassle of updating the passbook is almost over and the status of the bank balance is also available immediately through messages and emails. According to a study, there was a 41 per cent increase in the rate of instant payments in the year 2020 during the pandemic. In the country, about Rs 26 billion were paid through real time payment methods.
