Moving Towards Cashless Economy with Digital Illiteracy!!!!!!!!!!

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.