Cash to cashless, from discipline to negligence: Financial mismanagement in UPI ecosystem

As digitalisation gets embedded in daily routine, questions arise about its effect on personal financial habits. The lack of physicality induced by digitalisation opens up new pathways for mismanagement. Through this study, we examine the factors that influence financial mismanagement. We collected the primary data through a survey of 101 individuals. The survey was a structured Likert scale questionnaire. Using PCA varimax rotation, we conducted factor analysis in R software. For reliability, we employed KMO and Bartlett’s test, which indicated positive compatibility of constructs. We extracted three factors namely, Usage and security awareness, Digital financial mismanagement, and Financial Negligence. The factors show dominant loadings related to behavioral and monitoring items. Based on the findings, it appears that financial discipline is just as important as basic financial knowledge when it comes to determining the impact of financial mismanagement. The study has practical relevance for policy, education, consumer, and digital payment platform providers. Indicating avenue to improve design of financial application (app), practical education, in-app limits and buffers. For future research scholars can try expounding the factors and behavioural cues.