While the Covid-19 pandemic has had an adverse impact on many sectors in India, it has also led to some sectors booming. Digital payments, for example, have seen a steep rise thanks to most businesses going digital almost overnight. According to a report by ACI Worldwide and GlobalData, India saw more than 70.3 billion real-time payments transactions processed globally in 2020, a surge of 41 per cent compared to the previous year.
PayU, India's leading online payments solution provider, also mapped the impact of COVID-19 and lockdown as seen through year-on-year change in digital payments. The company notes a 24 per cent increase in the number of transactions and 23 per cent increase in expenditure across the PayU platform, year-on-year. Interestingly, during the festive season (October-December 2020) there was a 45 per cent spike in number of online transactions vis-a-vis the same period in the previous year. In line with this trend, PayU processed close to 100 million transactions in a single month during the festive period (15 October-15 November 2020). The number of UPI transactions grew by288 per cent and expenditure through UPI grew a phenomenal 331 per cent between 2019 and 2020.
https://www.indiaglobalbusiness.com/industry/finance/digital-payments-on-the-climb-in-india