{"id":4261,"date":"2016-11-11T05:57:54","date_gmt":"2016-11-11T05:57:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.digitalcreed.in\/?p=4261"},"modified":"2016-11-11T06:52:57","modified_gmt":"2016-11-11T06:52:57","slug":"money-nothing-cheques-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.digitalcreed.in\/money-nothing-cheques-free\/","title":{"rendered":"Money for Nothing (and your cheques for free)"},"content":{"rendered":"
Every time I see a long queue outside an Indian bank the Dire Straits<\/em> song “Money for Nothing” starts playing in my head! The “dire” shortage of currency notes in India today makes a mockery of a progressive economy — what is the world thinking about India right now? There’s no doubt that the economy will be hit for a moment as consumer spending drops. There will be much hardship for the common man (I can see this already). It’s a situation reminiscent of \u00a0war — people lining up for rations and using postage stamps.<\/p>\n On the positive side, this is a killer opportunity for the mobile wallet and credit card companies. And they are stealing the moment indeed — take a look at the full page ads in the local newspapers and the marketing messages from the credit card department.<\/p>\n The kirana<\/em>\u00a0(grocery\/convenience) store on the ground floor in my building is giving me credit, has started accepting payments through PayTm and, (drum roll) started accepting credit cards!<\/p>\n India is largely a cash-based economy — (small) merchants prefer to transact with cash. The use of debit cards and POS machines has been steadily rising, albeit not fast enough.<\/p>\n But a move like this will accelerate the use of cash-less transactions, electronic transfers and of course, technology adoption (my Kirana<\/em> store guy suddenly became tech savvy!).<\/p>\n India is also on the cusp on a mobile payments revolution. It already has a world-class framework in place to enable this called UPI (Universal Payments Interface). And the banks are ready to roll out UPI-based services. In fact, 2017 is going to be the year\u00a0when we see a mobile payments revolution in India.<\/p>\n So the shortage of currency notes of higher denominations is indeed a blessing in disguise. It will accelerate the adoption of cashless and electronic payments.<\/p>\n So, there are two sides to every coin after all, (no pun intended).<\/p>\n ——————————————————————————————————————————-<\/p>\n The writer is also the Business Technology Editor at Banking Frontiers magazine. Views expressed are personal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Every time I see a long queue outside an Indian bank the Dire Straits song “Money for Nothing” starts playing in my head! The “dire” shortage of currency notes in India today makes a mockery of a progressive economy — what is the world thinking about India right now? There’s no doubt that the economy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4263,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[93],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n