mumbai digital payment transactions through the unified payment interface upi cards and mobile wallets have made a near vshaped recovery this month volumes had plunged nearly 60 in april after a countrywide lockdown to arrest the spread of the covid19 pandemicupi operated by the national payments corp of india npci processed 123 billion transactions worth rs 241 lakh crore until june 28 the most value recorded by the channel in a month reserve bank of india rbi data showed the monthly volume in april was 990 million amounting to rs15 lakh crore recording the sharpest monthonmonth fall on the platform since it became operational in 2016 advt the upi increase is due to consumers increasingly paying utility and shopping bills through contactless modes experts said covid19 has accelerated the shift to digital said ambarish kenghe senior director product google pay its been a vshaped recovery after volumes had fallen in aprilgoogle pay the upi leader in india has seen bill payments and online recharges surge 180 on its platform in the months following the initial lockdown he said india imposed a nationwide lockdown at the end of march and easing of curbs started in early maywalmartowned payment company phonepe also said volumes had recovered payment volumes for june are back to prelockdown levels said karthik raghupathy vice president strategy and business development phonepe this is driven both by the fact that offline and online merchants across most parts of the country have now opened upseparately cardbased transactions are also recovering with volume and value processed by top banks seeing a gradual revival to precovid scale credit card payouts upaxis bank kotak mahindra rbl bank and sbi cards said cardbased transactions have returned to about 7080 of precovid volumes while the recovery has been sharper for payment by credit card with a sizable chunk of it taking place online debit card payments have also grown from may to junethe catalyst for recovery has been the opening up of ecommerce for nonessential goods and a digital shift in spendheavy sectors such as entertainment and education said executives monitoring these trends at top banks however spending in segments such as aviation fuel movies and dining remain subdued since people are traveling less and cinema halls and restaurants remain closed advt there has been a sharp surge in payments to ott overthetop and education platforms said deepak sharma president and chief digital officer at kotak mahindra bank ott refers to services such as netflixwe have also seen an increase in retail spends on ecommerce platforms in june which is contributing heavily to our volumes said vishwas patel ceo of ccavenue a leading payment gateway this could be because of pentup demandfull recovery to take timethe trend reflects a gradual revival in consumer sentiment but full recovery could still be some time away experts saidwhile the recovery in digital payment trends going from april to june has been positive one has to account for the fact that the sector was growing sharply before the pandemic