With people still showing reluctance in following a paperless route, cheque transactions have outnumbered credit and debit cards payment in India even as banks continued to roll out such plastic cards, according to the Asian Banker journal.In its latest issue, the journal said that in India, the transactions volume through cheques stood at 832.1 million, whereas through credit cards it was placed at 5.3 million and through debit cards it was 4 million in 2002. ‘‘Cash still remains the principal option for payments in regions like India, Phillipines and China,’’ the journal said.Asked about the trend, banking sources said that the problem was on account of limited number of card accepting points and the apprehensions over high interest rate on the cards, while a small section admit that people were rather scared of frauds.‘‘There has been no dramatic transformation in Asia’s retail payments arena in the last three years, though several emerging economies — India and China — principally witness material increases in payment instrument penetration over the period,’’ it said.The number of credit cards in circulation in India had increased to a whopping 158 per cent, a rise of 5.3 million as compared to the levels in 1999, the journal said, adding it was still ‘‘negligible’’ with a penetration of 0.005 per population.In the case of debit cards, which is relatively a late entrant in the Indian banking industry, the growth was 83 per cent to 4 million, it added. Sources, however, expressed optimism about the buoyancy in smart card transactions, saying that there was a ‘‘visible’’ improvement in the last one year. They said more and more small retail outlets have started accepting credit cards, a phenomenon which was earlier confined to big entities only. There is a rising trend among corporates, even in the public sector, to go for the co-branded cards, especially among the oil majors. Growth is imperative for both banks and customers to reduce the transaction costs and especially for the banking industry, which would see rightsizing in the human resources. Sources admitted that the frauds in the credit cards had become more sophisticated.
