Comments
With economic activities reverting to normal on most fronts, domestic remittances by migrant workers, too, has touched pre-Covid level and in fact is even higher, according to payment players.
“Things have got back to normal, we see a lot of activity in the market. People have gone back to jobs and continue to send money. That market continues to grow,” said Nipun Jain, CEO, RapiPay.
The average ticket size of domestic money transactions has increased to ₹3,500-3,600 from about ₹3,000 prior to the pandemic.
Further, as remittances have increased, cash withdrawals too have grown, Jain said.
India received $87 billion in remittances in 2021; US is the top source
Average cash withdrawn by RapiPay customers is now in the range of ₹3,000-3,100 compared with about ₹2,700 pre-Covid.
Similarly, Fino Payments Bank, too, has said that the domestic remittance market has been growing.
The bank reported that it achieved 58 per cent of the throughput of the first half of 2020-21 in domestic remittances between April and September 2021.
Its domestic remittance throughput was ₹29,187 crore in the first half of the current fiscal compared to ₹40,683 crore in 2020-21 and ₹23,492 crore in 2019-20.
“Domestic remittances have largely come back on track to the same level,” Rishi Gupta, Managing Director and CEO, Fino Payments Bank, had told BusinessLine in a recent interview.
Outward remittances under LRS rose 31%
The trends are significant given that the informal workforce had been significantly impacted by the pandemic with many workers returning home. The second wave of the pandemic had also led to health challenges in the rural areas.
Fino Payments Bank, in its DRHP, had noted that remittance transactions had largely recovered since the initial outbreak and lockdown, but remained about six per cent below its typical domestic remittance throughput.
However, recent indicators including GDP data and tax collections have signalled a normalisation of economic activities to pre-Covid levels.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.