MUMBAI: Digital payments are on a steep climb. For the five financial years beginning 2015-16, the volume of such payments has grown at a CAGR of 55.1% from 5.93 billion transactions to 34.35 billion in the year to March 2020.

In value terms, they have grown from Rs 920.38 trillion to Rs 1,623.05 trillion during this period, at a CAGR of 15.2%.

In 2016-17, digital payments jumped to 9.69 billion transactions from 5.93 billion a year ago. In value terms, this rose to Rs 1,120.99 trillion.

The numbers continued to scale new peaks with volume growing to 1,4.59 billion transactions and value jumping to Rs 1,369.86 trillion in 2017-18, PTI quoted the RBI data to report.

In 2018-19, the rise was faster. While volume jumped to 2,3.43 billion transactions, the value rose to Rs 1,638.52 trillion.

The next financial year saw a massive spike in volumes over the previous year to 3,4.34 billion transactions. In value, though, this slipped to Rs 1,623.05 trillion. This can be attributed to the steep fall in the overall economy and the massive job losses, forcing people to spend less and preserve more cash, PTI reported.

The coronavirus pandemic and the lockdown restrictions is only helping digital payments volumes to surge. The value though could see a deep fall due to the Covid-induced financial crisis.

Digital payment push started almost a decade back with limited access to NEFT, RTGS and ECS payments, PTI reported. Demonetisation also led to the growth of digital payments.

RBI's initiatives to make the digital payments ecosystem more secure include mandating use of only EMV chip and PIN-based debit and credit cards from January 2019; tokenisation from January 2019, when RBI issued a framework for tokenisation of card transactions which allowed all authorised card networks to offer tokenisation services, irrespective of the app provider, use case; facility to switch on/off transaction rights; mandatory positive confirmation to remove any ambiguity for funds transferred through NEFT and RTGS from March 2010, and January 2019, respectively.

Other innovations have been contactless cards which allows cardholders to tap and go; mandatory data storage within the country; harmonisation of turnaround time for failed transactions from September 2019 and setting up of a digital ombudsman and also institution of the Central Payment Frauds Information Registry.