Despite the growing popularity of credit cards in India, debit cards continue to rule the roost when it comes to online shopping with 589 million debit card transactions recorded in 2018, reports Economic Times (ET).

According to a report published by payment technology and transaction processing company Financial Software and Systems (FSS), though credit cards accounted for less than half of debit card transactions at 201.4 million last year, the total value of purchases made through credit cards was substantially higher.

While more than $10 billion was processed through credit card networks, only around $8 billion went through debit cards.

Also the average spend for debit card transactions was $13.4 when compared with $54.4 for credit cards.

American card network company Visa accounted for both the highest share of transactions with 47.5 per cent of the card swipes and also the total value of sales at 47.1 per cent. Another US company Mastercard processed 35 per cent of all transactions.

India's home-grown RuPay accounted for a 16 per cent share.

"For the trend report, we have only calculated merchant payments done digitally that are being processed by our platform and not included peer-to-peer payments," noted Suresh Rajagopalan, president of software products business at FSS. "Overall transactions have also been growing, which is a healthy sign, driven by strong growth in debit card transactions."