Digital vs. Physical Money: Perception and Spending Behavior in a Cashless Economy

Digitalization of financial services has been receiving utmost prominence globally with a great contribution from India standing as the top country in digital payments and receipts. The immense change with the introduction of the digital payment system (bank transfers, transactional data, POS, credit, savings, insurance, trading with the help of electronic devices) has to be addressed to understand its comprehensive effect due to various advantages they offer in making and receiving payments. Several studies show that expenditure of users of digital payments increased rapidly and expenditure patterns also changed multidimensionally. There are many factors for the increased expenditure of the users. One among such factors is how users perceive the value of digital money. This study has analyzed the perceived value of digital money i.e., the comparative value of digital money with that of physical money and its influence on spending patterns. Lesser the perceived value more will be the spending and higher the perceived value lesser will be the spending. Furtherly, focused on various tools to be employed for the optimum utilization of digital payments so that users get benefitted. The study proved that individuals crossing the budget threshold and indebted due to the over and unconscious usage of digital money and it has been suggested to impart financial education in order to promote effective and judicious utilization of money while doing digital payments. Additionally, employing breakthrough technologies to track and visualize the spending habits can capitalize fully from digitized payment platforms. Ultimately, considering all the things, digital payments are playing a great role in financial inclusion assisting the users with extended financial services like Credit, Insurance and Investing bringing greater assistance to the less privileged. Hence, optimum utilization of digital payments is necessary.