The Impacts of Using Mobile Wallet on Indian Economy
With Today’s technology, the country is moving towards a cashless environment, and Indians are now able to pay and receive money using their mobile, which sometimes raises some confusions and concerns.
The question here is whether these online transactions are able to provide significant and tangible benefits, or it will just be a way to force additional charges on citizens. To know more about this, let’s take a look on the impacts of this digitization.
Advantages Of Using Mobile Wallets
1. Easy to send and receive
The top motivator of using mobile wallets is the ease of conducting the financial transactions as you don’t need cash, cards, or even queue up for ATM withdrawals, but just your phone. Moreover, it is a safe and easy option at tours and emergencies.
2. Discounts
Some mobile wallets provide cashback offers and discounts when paying for fuel tickets, highway toll, etc. as an effective way to promote digital transactions. Additionally, such wallets may also offer the reward points and loyalty benefits on existing credit and store cards.
3. Tracking spends
All the transactions made by the mobile wallet are on record, so you can track your spending. Additionally, it is easy to explain your spends when filing income tax returns.
4. Budget discipline
Usually, people spend their money according to a certain pattern as they most often have the mobile wallets will record your spendings which will help you to analyse your spending patterns and throw up good insights over a couple of years.
5. Lower risk
If your cash are stolen, you can’t get them back; however, if your mobile wallet is stolen, you can easily block it remotely. Hence, the digital option offers limited security, especially if you are travelling.
6. No worries
You can pay any amount of money without being worry whether or not you have change.
With all the above advantages, let's look for some disadvantages…
Drawbacks of Mobile Wallets
There are few disadvantages of using mobile wallets like:
1. Higher risk of identity theft
Let’s be serious, even the well- educated people are not attuned to digital transactions, so there is a big chance of falling into phishing traps of online frauds. Additionally, there is no stringent legal process to deal with this kind or scale of fraud.
2. Losing your phone
Making transactions using your mobile wallet depend completely on the phone, so losing it will be such a disaster. As a result, it can make you susceptible to identity theft as well as helpless in the absence of physical cash and other payment options. The loss of your phone will be worst if you are travelling abroad.
2. Dying Battery
Additionally, you have to keep your battery constantly charged, especially if you are doing an important purchase or dealing with an emergency.
3. Difficult for tech-unsavvy
Some of the older people are not familiar with technologies and applications, so they will have a problem if they can’t download an app or don’t have cash.
Mobile wallets are now used by more than 70% of Indians, and statistics show that transactions such as Mobile Wallets will have positive effects on the Indian society and financials.