3 Major Challenges India Face in Going Cashless - DeMonetisatione

As we all know we are going through DeMonetisation phase where government has taken initiative to ban old notes and introduced new currency and during this phase, Government is peaching for cashless economy by encouraging people to use technology like e wallet, online banking, online shopping.

As an IT professional I really appreciate this move as this will surely benefit us in future. But for the time being there are some challenges we face for going cash less, in this blog I am going to explain what are those challenges and how we can overcome it.

1) Poor Internet Infrastructure and Internet Reach

This is the most common problem we face in India. Our Internet Infrastructure is poor till date. In may parts of the country there are no internet connections. In many part we still have to depend on Wireless connections, which are not reliable. And if there is a connection speed is very slow and not stable. Mobile Internet connections are also working slow. People are still using 2G connections in many part of area which is hard to use.

Take my example, I am leaving in Outer part of Ahmedabad and in my area there is still no reliable broadband connection. I am using wireless connections since last 3 to 4 years. 

To overcome this problem we must improve our internet infrastructure and make it available in all part of the country with decent speed that can be used without any difficulty. We must also increase mobile internet connections and spread it to all the areas.

2) IT Awareness, Awareness about Technology, IT Education

This is I think the biggest challenge we have. Most of the people don't know about technologies. They don't know about mobile / internet banking, online shopping, Paytm etc. Most of the people are also afraid of using technologies or use them in wrong way. That leads to other issues like fraud, cheating etc. 

For example, my cousin started using net banking but he saved username and password in draft SMS. Now that's the biggest mistake. If anyone see this, they can easily access it. This is the problem, people don't know about dangers of online technology.

• They don't know what they should do and should not do while using technology.  
• They don't know what can go wrong. 
• They don't know what's the importance of strong password.
• They don't know how to keep watch on their online activity.
• They don't know what should do in case their accounts are hacked.
• They don't know what is Paytm, what is Freecharge etc.
• They don't know what information they should not keep on web.

To overcome this problem we must educate people about online technology, make them understand what are the benefits of it and what are the drawbacks, what security measures they have to take. 

3) IT Security

As I have mentioned in above that we need security measures to increase confidence in use of IT technology. There are lots of fraud happening in this. For example anyone calls you and claim that they are speaking from bank and ask about your confidential information and you don't know about it and give away your information and then you are doomed, in few minutes your account is empty. Same for online shopping, you order something and you never get it or get something else.

To prevent this and to increase confidence in online technology we must enforce IT security. We must have strict cyber laws to prevent frauds. Educate people about this so they don't get trapped in frauds. We must enforce this and gain use of technology.