Indians are Getting More Comfortable with Credit
Recent statistics by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) show that desi citizens have started to move on from their historical debit-only stance, and have become more willing to use credit cards to make purchases and online payments.
In April this year, credit cards were swiped at merchants 25 crore times carrying ₹1.3 lakh crore in total transacted value, while debit card swipes stayed at a lower number – 22 crore and a way lower transacted value – ₹53,000 crore.
As a whole, credit card usage in India has grown by 20% over the course of one year, and debit cards have dropped their adoption by 31%. On the other hand, the number of credit cards in the country has reached 8.5 crore, a notable increase from the previous year’s 7.5 crore and less than 5 crore three years ago.
Casino Days Data Confirms Hike in Card Payments
Another recently revealed set of statistical data, contained in an industry report by Casino Days dedicated to studying the structure of payment transactions for online casino in India and the South Asian region, confirms the rising trend displayed by debit and credit cards like Visa and Mastercard.
The analysed data, covering the first five months of the present year, shows that casino players used cards by 24% more in May 2023, when 21% of casino payments were done via this method, compared to January of the same year, when 17% of all deposits and withdrawals were executed through cards.
According to the researchers at Casino Days, a major factor contributing to the increase in card payments by online casino fans in the region is the recent integration of RuPay cards into the Google Pay network operating under India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI).
UPI has gained significant traction in India and currently leads the market with 536 crore merchant transactions in May, more than doubling from the 254 crore transactions registered in May 2022.
Online Casino Veterans More Likely to Pay by Card
Diving deeper into the payments data provided by Casino Days, we see that seasoned online casino players display a much higher preference to use debit or credit cards over other payment methods such as mobile apps and net banking.
While only 10% of non-seasoned players opted to deposit or withdraw via cards during the analysed period, and 83% chose mobile app and banking gateways, a three times bigger share (30%) of online casino veterans used cards and 62% went for smartphone payment apps.
Mobile App Payments are the Most Popular
Deposits and withdrawals executed through mobile apps, such as Google Pay, Paytm, and PhonePe, that can function as e-wallets under the UPI system, are the most widely used method accounting for 87% of all successfully completed transactions on the Casino Days platform.
Nevertheless, such apps carried a disproportionately lower share of the total transacted value of 71%, standing in contrast with card payments, which carried 21.25% of the total value though just 8% of the transactions.
Neteller, Skrill, AstroPay and other digital wallets contributed 4.9% of the total successful quantity of transactions and 6.75% of the total successful amount, contributing to the diversity of deposit and withdrawal options provided by the operator.
Crypto Payments Just 1%, but with Impressive Stats
Interestingly, the least used payment method had the highest success rate and the highest transaction quantity to value ratio.
A mere 0.1% of all registered transactions for the five-month observation period were done via cryptocurrencies, but they carried a 10 times higher monetary weight of a full 1%.
At the same time, the success rate of mobile apps and net banking (76%), credit and debit cards (65%), and payment wallets (55%) are way lower than the impressive 95% success registered by crypto payments.
These figures show that card and crypto payments will play an increasingly vital role in shaping the future of the online casino industry.