Recent move
of Demonetisation of Rs.1000 and Rs.500 old currency notes and replacement of
vacuum created by same with new Rs.500 and Rs.2000 currency notes is having
various dimensions as per various economists. Every move has its pro’s and
con’s. The Modi government must have examined all the viewpoints and taken the
decision with due deliberations and discussions.
There can be
various alternatives to this vacuum caused by shortfall of currency notes and
one of them as suggested by various ministers and even PM himself is migrating
towards CASHLESS ECONOMY, as adopted in various western countries.
Understanding
Cashless Transactions in simple words is avoiding hard cash in most of our
financial dealings and use of various electronic payment means like
credit/debit cards or payment wallets etc. The full page advertisements
released by most of the e-wallet companies in India, in all leading newspaper,
is evident that these companies are going to be immensely benefited by such
move of migration towards Cashless Economy.
The main
risk about Cashless Transactions is lack of physical intervention at any check point
involved in entire transaction. Most of the transactions just need system
generated OTP as the only security mechanism, which can be very easily
compromised. Normally this OTP is sent on the mobile phone registered with the
service provider.
The other
risk is trust deficiency in this mechanism as people are running from post to
pillar for retrieval of their lost money in case of any such fraudulent transaction.
As most of the mechanisms are handled by call centers and it’s very difficult
to physically locate any of the support centers, people have trust deficiency
in the same.
Various Ministers
of the central government are making statements that even a school going kid is
able to teach how to use these digital money apps to their parents but can a
school going kid identify the inherent threats involved in these apps utilization or is he able to distinguish real caller or fake caller or genuine
app or fake app? And is government relying on these school kids for imparting
education of CASHLESS MONEY TRANSACTIONS to their digitally illiterate parents?
Technology
is two edged sword and nobody can be 100% sure about using it safely. 70% People
are using technology due to compulsion and only 30% are using the same
voluntarily. These 30% consists of techno savvy and few from good educational qualifications.
What about 70% of the masses who are using the Cashless modes mere by
compulsion? It is proven fact that if anyone adopts anything voluntarily then
he is bound to explore the same properly and the one who is forced to adopt the
technology will be under constant strain and fear of using the same.
How these
e-wallet companies function? What is there revenue model? What security
guidelines and practices they follow? What complaint redress mechanism they
have in place? Are there any possibilities of criminal activities through these
Cashless Transactions? If yes, what is counter action plan for the same? There
are many such questions which needs answers and these answers along with
solutions must be put in place at once or else too much damage would be caused
to millions of digital illiterates in the country.
For a
country with highest number of digital illiterates migration to Cashless
Economy is very bold and courageous move on the part of government. If proper
education about digital safety and using these digital instruments with utmost
care is not provided on war footing I foresee large adverse fallout of this
step.
Cyber
criminals have already made merry out of the digital illiteracy on part of online
users and this is evident from NCRB statistics about exponential growth in
cyber criminal activities in every passing year. This demonetisation will be an
additional booster in these criminal activities and coupled with the organized
cyber criminal activities and digital illiteracy there can be no stopping to
the same if fast actions are not initiated by the Government.
It has been
reported by a leading Mobile Wallet company very recently that due to concerns
about privacy security of the users they were compelled to suspend launch of
their POS App.
In October
2016 itself 32.14 Lakh debit cards of various public as well as private sector
banks were reported to have been compromised by malware attack and thereby
causing compromise of privacy of users. This incident speaks about the inherent
dangers in Cashless Economy.
For moving
towards cashless economy our at least 80% digital users must be digital
literate and they must be properly trained and educated to handle these new avatar
of monetary instrument. At the same time our laws must be more stringent and police
must be on toes. The traditional mindset of police machinery which revolves
around jurisdiction only must be modified immediately and the police should be
more digitally equipped. How digitalised society can be regulated under
digitalised police or judicial machinery?
Sooner we
find the solutions to these concerns the better will be the future.
