India's debit card payments have fallen by three quarters
Card payments a month in India, millions, December 2019 (series high) vs August 2026.
- 1. India now has more working-age people than China
- 2. India's UPI now handles 86% as many payments as Visa
- 3. Indian students now outnumber Chinese students in the US
- 4. India's GitHub developers outnumber China's, Brazil's and Japan's combined
- 5. India's stock market grew 23-fold since 2000
- 6. Indian phone users now average 25.7 GB a month
- 7. India's metro network quadrupled in a decade
- 8. India now ships over a third of world rice exports
- 9. India went from 1% to 37% of Russia's crude sales
- 10. India's wild tigers have more than doubled since 2006
- 11. Two in three rickshaws sold in India are electric
- 12. Indians now file more patents at home than Germans
- 13. India published more science papers than Germany and Britain combined
- 14. India now holds more foreign reserves than Saudi Arabia
- 15. Open defecation in India fell from 73% to 7%
- 16. India's sun and wind now outproduce Germany's
- 17. India's landlines have nearly doubled since 2020
- 18. India's debit card payments have fallen by three quarters
Debit card payments a month: 457.9 million in December 2019, the series high, and 103.9 million in August 2026.
Debit cards in issue in August 2026, up 29% from 805 million in December 2019: more cards, far less use.
Credit card payments now outnumber debit card payments six to one: 632.4 million against 103.9 million a month.
the numbers & method
| Dec 2019 (M) | Aug 2026 (M) | |
|---|---|---|
| debit cards | 457.9 | 103.9 |
| credit cards | 203.7 | 632.4 |
Claim types Fact
Reserve Bank of India, RBI Bulletin, Current Statistics table 'Payment System Indicators' (Part I, retail card payments; Part III, number of cards), volumes in lakh (1 lakh = 100,000), provisional. August 2026 from the bulletin at BS_ViewBulletin.aspx?Id=24569; December 2019 from the bulletin at BS_ViewBulletin.aspx?Id=20129, both read on rbi.org.in. Debit card payments (PoS plus others): Dec 2019 4,578.88 lakh; Aug 2026 1,038.65 lakh. Credit card payments: Dec 2019 2,036.64 lakh; Aug 2026 6,324.47 lakh. Debit cards in issue: Dec 2019 8,053.24 lakh; Aug 2026 10,368.29 lakh. Full fiscal year 2025-26: debit card payments 12,802.12 lakh, credit card payments 60,237.64 lakh. UPI payments over the same months: 13,084.02 lakh (Dec 2019) and 245,089.58 lakh (Aug 2026), about 19 times more (not charted). RBI's card breakdown starts in November 2019; December 2019 is the highest month of debit card payments in the RBI series held by the progrss vault (from November 2019). Conversions to millions, percent changes and ratios are progrss calculations. The plate shows the shift and claims no single cause.
what connects to this
one plate, every morning
The new world, explained in one chart, in your inbox at 7:00, your time. Free.