How many hours a week was the average person spending driving to get cash?
Re:A digital payments revolution in India
by rippercushions on Saturday May 20, 2023 @05:12PM
(#36015679)
During the rupee demonetization a few years back, getting cash required queueing up for hours. About the only silver lining of that whole debacle was the boost it gave to digital payments, because cash was so broken.
One could argue it was the other way round. It was done to break cash (since it cannot be tracked) and boost digital payments.
My data. Once a week, drive my car to the ATM 1.5 km away. 3 km roundtrip x 52 weeks/yr = approx. 156 km/yr.
My car gives a mileage economy of ~10 km/ltr of fuel. So around 15-16 litres of fuel burning avoided.
If I did half of these ATM stops during other trips, thats still 7 to 8 litres of fuel burning avoided.
It is pervasive, ubiquitous and very user friendly.
This is all thanks to the mobile data revolution ushered in by the telecoms companies in India over the last decade and a half.
Yes, data privacy is a larger issue that needs to be addressed in India, but that is no different than other digital payment methods like credit/debit cards.
One less mentioned point is that this payments revolution has done a lot to cut the country's carbon-footprint in the form of driving to the ATM or bank to get cash for routine transactions. Also, UPI is extremely consumer-friendly. If you withdrew cash from another bank's ATM, you may be charged fees whereas UPI is free for transactions up to INR 100,000 (approx $1200 USD)/day. This covers almost all day-to-day transaction needs for people.
I can choose a third-party fintech company's UPI app (eg: PayTM, PhonePe etc.,) or my bank's UPI app. So, it is incredibly flexible.