After demonetisation, cashless payment methods have become a necessity for both rural and urban populations. Be it a farmer, teacher, soldier or even a CEO of a big brand, every citizen of the country needs to know about the available methods to make cashless transactions.
With the current cash-crunch in the country, the Indian government is aggressively promoting digital modes of banking. The government even waived off the transaction charges on a few payment methods.
Digital Wallets
Digital wallets are the easiest options to make small payments. Before demonetisation, this payment method hardly saw acceptance in non-urban or even non-metro cities of the country. Now, e-wallets make an efficient alternative for cash.
Paytm, MobiKwik, Freecharge are one of the biggest service providers in the e-wallet segment. To use these special kind of wallets, one will have to charge their account through online payment. The service provider saves some of the card information to make the transaction quicker with every attempt.
USSD transfer
The USSD transfer system can be a huge relief for people who don't own a smartphone or don't have access to internet. This method of transferring money is universal to all phones regardless of their specifications.
The user can acccess various banking options by merely dialing a USSD code from any phone with a SIM card. In this case, the number should be registered with the bank. The service was promoted as an option for rural citizens of the nation. Since the service is mainly targeted at village-dwellers, the services are available in 11 regional languages.
UPI
This method is more a part of mobile banking but with a special emphasis on security. Transfering funds using NEFT or mobile banking requires the sender to reveal their account number to the reciever but with this method the user will be able to send money using a unique user name.
The option can either be accessed via internet banking or mobile banking application.
Net Banking
Net banking is a nifty way to access all your banking facilities from the convenience of your house or workplace. The user is required to activate net banking via internet and create a unique name and password for further transactions.
Users can transfer money, check statements, manage beneficiaries and apply for various banking privileges using the payment method.
Mobile Banking
Mobile banking has turned phones into banking portals. This year in February India became the second largest smartphone market in the world in terms of shipments.
The applications made for banking are specially optimised for smartphones. Apart from the net banking user ID, the customer will have to make a unique PIN to access the services.
Gradually, many banks are using additional security options available on the smartphones (such as fingerprint sensors) to make logging in easy but safer.
Credit/debit Card
The credit/debit cards are one of the only widespread cashless payment techniques in India. It has become customary for banks to provide a credit or debit card during the creation of the bank account. The cards can be used at ATMs or Point of Sale devices that are available at retail outlets.
Credit cards even come with certain privileges which reward users for payments done using.