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It Takes Time To Go Digital: Despite India Growing At 50 Per Cent, BRICS Countries Still Ahead
A person using BHIM app on his mobile. (Saumya Khandelwal/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)
Since demonetisation, to reduce dependency on physical currency, a wide section of India’s population has been resorting to the use of digital payment systems to make monetary transactions easier. Since 2015, India has grown at a pace of 50 per cent when it comes to making digital payments.
Despite the aforementioned statistics, we still lag behind many of the BRICS nations. For instance, Russia’s transactions account to 200 per adult, annually. India only remains at 20. Some of the new digital infrastructure in India such as QR codes and UPI payment options have definitely boosted the growth of digital transactions, Live Mint reported.
However, there is a set-back due to the apex court’s ruling on Aadhaar because private companies now are no longer allowed to save Aadhaar data to complete the KYC procedure. Given the amount of population we hold in India, having merely 69 ATMs for a range of 1,000 sq km is definitely not enough. Hence, there is a need for physical infrastructure to improve as well.
Apart from the reasons mentioned above, our internet penetration remains visibly low and usage of smartphones is the only way to go about to improving our ratio of digital transactions, as mentioned in the report.
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