RBI Digital Payments Index

The Reserve Bank of India recently released the Digital Payments Index to measure the growth in cashless transactions in India.

What are the parameters of the Digital Payments Index?

The Digital Payments Index comprises of five broad parameters. These parameters have different weight to measure the penetration of digital payments in the country. The parameters of the Digital Payments Index and its penetration are as follows:

• Payment Enablers: 25%
• Payment Infrastructure-Demand Side factors: 10%
• Payment Infrastructure-Supply Side factors: 15%
• Payment Performance: 45%
• Consumer Centricity: 5%

What are the sub parameters of Payment Enablers of Digital Payments Index?

The sub factors of the payment enablers of the Digital Payments Index comprises of internet, mobile, bank account, merchants and participants.

What are the sub parameters of Payment Infrastructure of Digital Payments Index?

The sub parameters for the Payment Infrastructure of Digital Payments Index comprises of credit card, prepaid payment instruments, debit card, point-of-sale terminals, quick response codes, automated teller machines.

 What are the sub parameters of Payment Performance of Digital Payments Index?

The Payment Performance carries the highest weightage in the Digital Payments Index. The Sub parameters of Payment Performance of Digital Payments Index are paper clearing, cash withdrawal rules, e volume and value of digital payments, unique users and currency in circulation.

What are the sub parameters considered under Consumer Centricity of Digital Payments Index?

The RBI would consider customer education and awareness, complaints, frauds, system declines under the consumer centricity of the Digital Payments Index.

What is the base year of Digital Payments Index of RBI?

The Reserve Bank of India has set the base year of Digital Payments Index as 2018.

What was the Digital Payments Index for the year 2019 and 2020?

The Digital Payments Index for the year 2019 was 153.47 and for that of 2020 was 207.84 respectively.

When will the Digital Payments Index be released?

The Reserve Bank of India is to publish the Digital Payments Index on a semi-annual basis from March 2021.

Why is the Digital Payments Index needed?

The digital payments in India have seen a rapid increase in adoption of digital platforms lately. According to the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), in December 2020 around 223 crores of transactions worth 4.16 lakh crores of rupees were made as compared to that of 221 crores of transactions worth 3.9 lakh crores of rupees in November 2020. This clearly shows that the digital transactions in the country are increasing day by day. Therefore, it is essential to measure its growth and launch respective initiatives to support the growth.

Month: Current Affairs - January, 2021