Steep Fall in Cash, Cheques Transactions Seen by 2020: Report
Monday, 05 September 2011, 17:01 IST
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Mumbai: With increasing adoption of alternative channels, the share of traditional cash and cheque-based transactions is projected to fall to a low 15 percent by 2020, a report by Boston Consultancy Group said. "Cash and cheques, which dominate the transaction profile in the country at present with 49 percent of transactions, are expected to go down to 15 percent," the consultancy firm has said in a recent report. Payments through cash and cheques had accounted for a high 94 percent of the total transactions in 2003 and the share has been on the downslide ever since. Alternative transaction models like ATMs, mobile phones, points of sale and Internet banking have been steadily increasing their shares over the years, the report said,and noted that mobile banking will gather more steam in the days ahead, driven primarily by the smart phones. "Mobile phones, propelled by 3G and the smart phone technology, will emerge as an undisputed winner by 2020, potentially accounting for 20-30 percent of the total transactions," the report says. It can be noted that banks in the developed world have been very swift in technology adoption. In Britain, a proposal has also been mooted to ban cheques by 2018. In the domestic context, banks will adopt mobile for an array of activities like online banking, which will include bill payments etc, and for commerce on both the payment as well as acceptance side, the report said. Adoption of mobile-based platforms will also ensue in productivity enhancement for banks as mobile transactions cost much less than ATM or branch-based ones, the report added.
Source: PTI
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