Home > Magazine > ChaiTime > Digital Payments Proliferate in India

 

Digital Payments Proliferate in India

Compiled/partly written by Melvin Durai Email Compiled/partly written by Melvin Durai
April 2023
Digital Payments Proliferate in India

It’s a sign of the times when girls scouts selling cookies in your neighborhood hold up a sign displaying a QR code for their Venmo account. But what if you come across a beggar accepting digital payments?

That’s actually happening in India, according to a recent New York Times article that cites many examples of the country’s digital-payment revolution, none more remarkable than a beggar in Delhi flashing a QR code at a motorist who has no cash to give.

The QR code can be found everywhere in India. Roadside vendors, beachside performers, auto-rickshaw drivers, and countless others are participating in a scan-and-pay system that’s generating billions of transactions every month through a digital payment system that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has developed.

About half the transactions involve small payments, such as for a cup of chai or packet of chips, but in total last year, they exceeded the value of digital transactions in the U.S., Britain, Germany, and France combined.

Almost 300 million people and 50 million merchants are using the digital payment system, according to Dilip Asbe, the managing director of the National Payments Corporation of India.

“I used to prefer cash,” Rajesh Kumar Srivastva, an auto-rickshaw driver in Delhi, told The Times. “But I learned the benefits of this during the lockdown.”

He was pleasantly surprised, following the pandemic, to find much more money in his bank account than he had expected, thanks to digital payments.


More of ChaiTime here:

http://www.khabar.com/magazine/chaitime/​


Compiled and partly written by Indian humorist MELVIN DURAI, author of the novel Bala Takes the Plunge.

[Comments? Contributions? We would love to hear from you about Chai Time. If you have contributions, please email us at melvin@melvindurai.com. We welcome jokes, quotes, online clips, and more.]



Enjoyed reading Khabar magazine? Subscribe to Khabar and get a full digital copy of this Indian-American community magazine.


  • Add to Twitter
  • Add to Facebook
  • Add to Technorati
  • Add to Slashdot
  • Add to Stumbleupon
  • Add to Furl
  • Add to Blinklist
  • Add to Delicious
  • Add to Newsvine
  • Add to Reddit
  • Add to Digg
  • Add to Fark
blog comments powered by Disqus

Back to articles

 

DIGITAL ISSUE 

10_24-Cover-Presidential-Election-2024.jpg

 

eKhabar

  NRSPAY_Khabar-Website_2x2_Ad.gif

Krishnan Co WebBanner.jpg

Raj&Patel-CPA-Web-Banner.jpg

Embassy Bank_gif.gif 

MedRates-Banner-11-23.jpg

DineshMehta-CPA-Banner-0813.jpg