‘Amid pandemic, financial services sector saw an extraordinary 120% growth in 2020’

The year of 2020 began with a series of uncertainties but soon businesses started to slowly stabilize, and some even grew back to pre-Covid levels. Every business across every sector took a severe hit, and the FinTech sector as well did not escape the pandemic. The first 30 days of the global crisis were the toughest, and Razorpay too witnessed a decline of 30% in digital payments. However, after the first 70 days of the national lockdown, digital payments rebounded by 23 per cent indicating a slow but steady comeback. Razorpay , the newest Unicorn on the block and the leading full-stack financial solutions company, has launched the 7th Edition of The Era of Rising FinTech Report.
The 7th Edition of this report provides an in-depth study of an evolving FinTech ecosystem in this pandemic era. It analyses consumer behaviour and digital spending patterns during lockdown. It also provides comparative analysis of how different sectors and payment modes performed in the last year, 2020 compared to 2019 when businesses and life were normal. In comparison with 2019, online transactions grew by 80% in 2020, suggesting a magnificent adoption of digital payments by consumers and businesses, alike. Let’s take a look at a few more insights here. All findings in this report are based on transactions held on Razorpay platform between 2019 and 2020.
* A major contribution to the growth of digital payments in 2020 came from the last 6 months when businesses across a few sectors slowly started to show signs of recovery; digital payments saw a 73 per cent growth between July and December as compared to the first 6 months of 2020.
* Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities contributed to more than half, 54 per cent of 2020’s digital transactions, demonstrating a 92% growth in just one year.
* States like Chandigarh, Punjab, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam and Kerala saw a growth of 205 per cent, 187 per cent, 127 per cent, 124 per cent, 117 per cent respectively, along with a positive growth from other states as well.
* Putting safety first, consumers across states opted to make all bill payments online giving the Utilities/Bill Payments sector a whooping 357 per cent growth in 2020.
* Mutual Funds grew by 382 per cent in a year indicating a ripe time for investments as consumers viewed the market corrections as an opportunity rather than a threat.
* Accounting and Employment agencies which form the Professional Services Sector were at the receiving end of this pandemic owing to cost-cutting by companies, creating a 66% decline. However, with the growth in Lending, Mutual Funds and Insurance, the Financial Services sector witnessed an extraordinary growth of 120 per cent.
* With every service moving to virtual platforms, the Education, E-commerce and Healthcare sectors also witnessed a significant growth of 167 per cent, 189 per cent and 148 per cent respectively. The Logistics sector also showed a slight growth of 18 per cent in 2020.
* Every sector, except for Travel and Housing & Real Estate, has started to slowly grow back to pre-lockdown levels; these were the only two sectors that showed a negative growth during the last six months of 2020 when the situation started to ease out in parts.
* From consistently being the second most preferred payment method in 2019, UPI became the most preferred one in 2020, overtaking Cards, Netbanking & Wallets by showing a steep 120% growth. This is a sign of higher adoption of online payments especially from tier-2 and 3 cities.
* Wallets have regained attention in 2020 owing to the increased offers, cashbacks and an increase in the number of players in the market.
Harshil Mathur, CEO and Co-founder, Razorpay said, “In a year of unprecedented changes and challenges, 2020 also posed some interesting opportunities for businesses to embrace digital payments. While the overall transactions in 2020 significantly grew compared to last year, what I’m really excited about is that it grew by about 73 per cent in the last six months alone.”