EFFECT OF SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGNS ON DIGITAL PAYMENT ADOPTION IN INDIA

The rapid digitalization of India’s financial ecosystem has positioned the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) as a cornerstone of cashless transactions, yet the specific role of social-media promotion in driving this adoption remains underexplored. This study investigates the effect of nationwide social-media campaigns on the growth of UPI transactions by employing an exclusively secondary-data approach. Monthly UPI transaction volumes from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) covering the period 2018–2024 were integrated with publicly available social-media engagement metricstweet frequency, retweets, likes, and hashtag reach associated with major government and industry campaigns such as UPI Chalega, Digital India, and various festival-linked cashless initiatives. Using Python-based sentiment analysis (VADER) to classify millions of campaign-related posts, the study constructed a composite engagement index and applied time-series modeling, interrupted time-series tests, and multiple regression techniques to examine the relationship between online engagement and digital-payment adoption.