Pandemic boosts digital India, J&K tops list of digitally inclusive states and UTs say study

Incidentally, the January to March period in 2020 coincided with the pandemic hitting India and the country going into lockdown mode in end-March. 

The study conducted by Razorpay, a leading full-stack financial solutions company, reflected among other things that embracing e-commerce and online payment methods have played a major role in keeping small businesses afloat.

The eight edition of ‘The Era of Rising Fintech’ report, according to the company, provides a detailed view of the evolving FinTech ecosystem, the digital spending patterns of consumers and an analysis of how digital payments performed in the last 12 months of the pandemic.

The report also delves into a comparative analysis of how different sectors and payment modes performed in 2021, compared to 2020, when businesses and life were hit by COVID-19.

The company said that all findings in this report are based on transactions held on Razorpay platform between 2020 and 2021 (JFM: Jan-Feb-Mar and OND: Oct- Nov-Dec).

Key highlights:

In JFM’21, Tier-2 and 3 cities and towns continued to contribute over 50 per cent of all online transactions

As tourism opened up, Jammu & Kashmir found itself in the top 10 Digitally Inclusive States/Union Territories for the first time, with a growth of 36 per cent in online transactions in JFM’21 compared to JFM’20, ranking above Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana

Payment options such as Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) was up 569 per cent in the last twelve months, owing to consumers avoiding bulk payments and preferring affordable payment modes

UPI continues to be the preferred payment option followed by debit Cards, Credit Cards and Net Banking

Travel industry posted a 52 per cent growth in JFM’21 compared to JFM’20, indicating some stability in the Travel and Hospitality economy

In the last few months, consumers have increasingly been ordering online and with that F&B industry reported growth of 69 per cent from January to March’21

Real-estate saw an increase of 65 per cent in JFM’21 vs OND’20, after a 14 per cent decline in the past 6 months of 2020 compared to the first 6 months

Vedanarayan Vedantham, Head of SME business, Razorpay, said, "The last 12 months have been like being inside a time capsule. India's digital payments ecosystem in this timeframe has seen the kind of growth that might have happened over a three to five year horizon if not for the pandemic.”