Lately my kiranawala
has been closing his shop early then usual timings. He is a man who helps you with even
midnight shopping but it seems these days; his clients are taking too much on
credit and on asking for payment request for card swipe. With shortage of
currency notes, people are sort of turning towards plastic cards and online
transactions for meeting their daily requirements on time. The poor shop keeper
is a SSCE pass out person, who has grown big with his experience. He does not
understand using the plastic money or the latest one catching craze of digital
wallets. I am sure it’s just matter of time that he too would understand the
benefits of these transaction methods.
So what is this system of digital payment?
The system of using online
mode of payment for use of any particular service or product is known as digital
payment. Like till now we made our major payment in cash for shopping, utility
bills or traveling. To carry the same, we required leather wallets that would
hold our cash, licenses, shopping loyalty cards, family pictures making it
bulky and difficult to fit in your back pocket. Although, with debit and credit
cards usage, things got simpler but with our habit to carry multiple cards
nothing seemed to change much.
So, with such physical
difficulties and with growing fear of being robbed, it’s a good idea to have
wallets online. It’s a mini revolution to move the cashless society.
So, a digital
wallet simply refers to an electrical device or virtual device that allows us
to make payments in our electronic commerce transactions. This payment
can be made either from your desktop computer; tab or even your smartphone. You
simply have to link your savings bank account to the wallet. By linking, I mean
you instruct the wallet service provider to debit your particular linked bank
account to pay for your expenses. It can store cash for making mobile, online or offline payments. Most digital wallets
initially allowed users to transfer only up to Rs 10,000 every month on
verification of only the email address and mobile number. This limit was
increased to Rs 20,000 post demonetization by the Reserve Bank of India.
How Digital
Wallets Work?
Most of the digital wallet services work through apps
on smartphone (IOS or Android). Some of these use RFID tagging to accept the payments.
While a few have the concept of attaching a PIN for every new transaction.
How do you select
your digital wallet?
a) Look for
rules/ restrictions on loading money and utilization/withdrawal on the amount
of cash.
b)
The number
of partnerships/alliance of digital wallets firm is important point of
differentiation.
c)
Look at the free deals and cash back provided
by the service providers. More transactions should earn you more loyalty
points.
d)
Also, important aspect is to understand the
payment security method adopted by the service provider. Although, here the
risk is limited to the amount transferred to the wallet.
Our word of caution
There are no dedicated
laws on digital payments as on date. With new and growing markets for digital
transactions, many fraud and novice entrepreneurs might take plunge in providing
this service and with poor business strategies close down soon. The vision of cashless
society is surely going to be a reality after half a decade but currently as a
newbie consumer we need to take baby steps. Its’ fun to scan code to ride auto rickshaw
home, but India is mass ground, we don’t prefer fancy things, we need more
useful things.
List of some of the popular digital wallets:
(click on the image to enlarge it)
Thanks and Regards
Team
Email: saarthifp@gmail.com
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