Comparative Analysis of Prepaid Payment Before COVID 19 and Now: A Case of India

Purpose –In India, RBI has advocated the customers to use prepaid payment instruments for contactless transactions due to COVID-19 pandemic. But there are some sectors such as, travel, cinemas, restaurants, entertainment etc. are directly hit by this and pulled the usage of prepaid payments. Whereas, grocery stores, online shopping, e-learning, online recharges, Ed Techs and utility bills etc., are augmenting the volume of prepaid payments. In nutshell, it seems critical to evaluate the actual volume and value of prepaid payments. Thus, this study has made an attempt to comparatively analyse the prepaid payments volume before COVID-19 and now. Design/methodology/approach – Data for the study has been collected from secondary sources namely, Global Payment Report, RBI Report, Niti Aayog Report, Payment Method Report, Deloitte Report, The Infosys Report and from various e- resources. The change in trend has been done by using trend analysis where change in percentage in the volume and value of prepaid payment instruments have been calculated by using formula: 𝑪𝒖𝒓𝒓𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝒀𝒆𝒂𝒓 − 𝑩𝒂𝒔𝒆 𝒀𝒆𝒂𝒓 𝑪𝒖𝒓𝒓𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝒀𝒆𝒂𝒓 × 𝟏𝟎𝟎 Finding – Findings revealed that after demonetisations there was 89 percent increase in the total volume and 97 percent increase in the value of PPI transactions from demonetisation period (2016-17) to now (during COVID 19 pandemic 2020) which will be further estimated to be mounting over the end of the year 2020. Among the different instruments, wallets are reported highest usage through interoperability with UPI followed by prepaid cards and others. Research limitations – Data has been collected only from the secondary sources.Other factors like share occupied by each instrument, market growth, access and availability are still ignored. Originality/ value – The paper compares the volume and value of prepaid paymentsbefore COVID- 19 and now.