Digital Payments, Trust and Social Institutions in Urban Informal Markets: Ethnographic Insights from Gaya and Hyderabad, India

This article examines how the adoption of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) reshapes social institutions, markets, families and cultural practices in urban informal economies in India. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork, including in-depth interviews with small businesses and vendors across Gaya (Bihar) and Hyderabad (Telangana), the study traces how digital payment systems mediate trust, household power and everyday economic behaviour. Using the Institutional Logics Perspective (ILP) and referring to Georg Simmel’s theory of money as a social relation, this article argues that UPI adoption is not merely a technological shift but a reconfiguration of social relations, financial legibility and cultural meanings of money. Findings reveal tensions between digital convenience, the persistence of the ritual value of cash and the gendered exclusions embedded in digital transactions. The article contributes an ethnographically grounded analysis to a literature dominated by quantitative and policy-oriented accounts of financial inclusion.