Despite the opposition parties trying to make an issue out of November 8, 2016 demonetization/remonetization that caused the withdrawal of currency notes of denominations of Rs 500 and 1,000, one of the beneficial impacts of the move has been payment transparency. According to RBI and National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) data, digital payments through National Electronic Fund Transfer (NEFT) and mobile banking between September 2016 and September 2018 made a huge and long jump, thus improving transparency in business transactions.

The value of NEFT transactions had reportedly shot up from Rs 988,000 crore in September 2016 (just two months before demonetization) to Rs14,182,000 crore in September 2017, and to Rs 18,015,000 crore in September 2018.

The value of mobile banking transactions also climbed up from Rs 2,700 crore in September 2015 to Rs 104,300 crore in 2016, and to Rs 186,200 crore in 2017.

This growth has reportedly been driven by Tier- II and Tier- III markets, which mostly stayed away from digital transactions before demonetization.

The trend of increased use of alternative channels in banking is said to be continuing. SBI has reported a 502 bps increase in the share of alternative channels at 83.47 percent as on September 2018 against 78.45 percent in the year-ago period. In individual segments, internet banking has shown faster growth.