With 42 million transactions and a 19.5% share in volumes, State Bank of India SBI ) followed Paytm in mobile banking transactions.

Mobile banking transactions have doubled between October 2017 and June when they crossed the 300-million mark to clock over 306 million transactions.

Moreover, value of transactions via the mobile banking channel inched close to Rs 2 lakh crore for the first time in over a year. The aggregate value of mobile banking transactions in June stood at Rs 1.9 lakh crore, the highest since May 2017, when transactions worth Rs 2.13 lakh crore were reported. After a downtrend in value after May 2017, they started picking up in September. In April this year the value was Rs 1.3 lakh crore, increasing to Rs 1.8 lakh crore in May, data released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) show.

Experts say transaction values and volumes may be rising owing to the several digital payments options that consumers now have. For instance, Google Tez joined the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) platform in September 2017. Even before that PhonePe — Flipkart’s UPI app — made its debut. Paytm Payments Bank, launched in November 2017, recorded 47 million transactions in January 2018, accounting for nearly 22% of all transactions made through the mobile banking channel.

While bank-wise data on mobile banking transactions for June are not available yet, numbers for transactions made in January 2018 suggest that some of the growth in volumes may have come from Paytm’s conversion to a payments bank.

With 42 million transactions and a 19.5% share in volumes, State Bank of India (SBI) followed Paytm in mobile banking transactions.

However, Paytm may have contributed little to the rebound in transaction value as it accounted for a meagre 0.25% of the Rs 1.12 lakh crore worth of mobile banking transactions in January. Indeed, those who hold savings accounts with Paytm Payments Bank are allowed to keep balances of only up to Rs 1 lakh in them.

The increased adoption of digital channels of banking by customers of legacy banks, such as SBI, may have pushed up transaction values. As per SBI’s annual report for FY18, its mobile banking channel now has over 30.5 million registered users and the bank processed transactions amounting to Rs 6 lakh crore during the year. In November 2017, SBI chairman Rajnish Kumar had said that only about 22% of the bank’s transactions now come from branches. “Of the remaining 78% that are non-branch transactions, 36% are digital transactions and the rest are ATM transactions,” he had said. Individual and corporate payments initiated, processed and authorised using a mobile device are classified as mobile banking transactions.