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India’s Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) has been rated as the world’s best real-time payment service in an analysis of 54 countries that have similar facilities.
“India received the only 5+ rating, and remains the global leader in real-time payments usage,” according to the sixth annual Flavours of Fast report by FIS. IMPS is rated highest in FIS’s ‘Faster Payments Innovation Index’, beating real-time payment services of countries such as the United States, China, Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany, and others, it said, adding that six countries, including Australia, Denmark, Poland, Romania, Singapore, and Sweden, received a 4+ rating for their real-time payments systems. Real-time payments systems are also gaining popularity around the world, and their use has increased 35 per cent globally over the past year and nearly four-fold since 2014, it said.
Daily transactions
“India saw a 10-fold increase in value and an eight-fold increase in transaction volumes through IMPS over the last year,” said the report, noting that it processes nearly two crore faster payment transactions every day.
While demonetisation was a huge boost for cashless payments, the support for mobile numbers to be used for real-time payments added convenience and largely drove volumes, the report further said.
The report highlighted infrastructure challenges for payments, pointing out that 25 crore people in India still do not have phones, and despite the presence of more than six crore merchants, there are less than 40 lakh POS devices. “Real-time digital payments can bridge some of these gaps,” it said.
The report also highlighted the role of Unified Payment Interface (UPI) and QR codes as digital payment alternatives in India.
“The growth in services based on Unified Payment Interface (UPI) has led to the creation of a wealth of new innovative payment solutions,” it said, adding that immediate payments are now built into the social fabric of the country with money transfer apps such as Google Pay and Paytm having added chatting features and WhatsApp and Hike messaging enabling money transfers.
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