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Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant spelt out the all-digital plan again last week, saying credit cards, debit cards and even ATMs would be redundant in the next four years or so as people will use their mobile phones for most financial transactions. This is in contrast to the latest Reserve Bank of India date, which shows that the total number of ATMs has been on the rise. In the last three years, the number has increased by 30 per cent to 2,23,000, as of June 2017. While credit card swipes have come down to 30 per cent of the total PoS transactions from 43 per cent four years ago, they continue to make up for 50 per cent of the total amount swiped. The finding is that Indians prefer to shop with debit card, as it seems more like cash in hand.
Global figures also indicate that cash, ATMs and cards are nowhere near vanishing point yet. Nor by 2022. Take for instance, Japan. Last year, around 62 percent of consumer transactions in Japan were in cash, according to Euromonitor, a market research firm. In Britain, cash transaction are pegged at 22 per cent, in the US 34 per cent, in South Korea 10 per cent and in China 50 per cent.
Again, National ATM Council statistics in the US give us an idea on whether cash transactions are on their way out. As of march 2017, the total number ATM machines in the US was 425,000, out of three million all over the world.
Another survey conducted last year showed that as much as 68 per cent of Americans aged 65 and above had a credit card. In the UK, there were 223 million credit card purchases as of March 2016, with a total value of 12.6 billion Euros. The spending volume had risen two per cent from a year ago, but in value it was one per cent lower. On debit card, domestic spending in October 2016 was around 39.2 billion Euros, which is less than one per cent increase from the month before. However, the slow growth in the UK has been attributed to Brexit vote last year resulting in decline of consumer confidence.