Digital Financial Literacy, Digital Financial Service Usage, and Consumer Protection Challenges among Working Women in Hyderabad

The value digital financial services can generate only comes when the users have the means to operate withoutfear of compromising their safety, the ability to detect manipulation, and the ability to take effective actions toget the financial services they deserve. This paper aimed to analyse the digital financial literacy and the use ofdigital financial services and explore the core consumer-protection issues among 384 working women in sixGreater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) areas in seven occupation groups. Digital financial literacywas assessed via knowledge, risk awareness, risk control, and rights and redress. The penetration and frequencyof UPI, mobile banking, wallets, internet banking, digital lending and investment and insurance were used togauge usage. The analytical data presented here have been simulated using an approved questionnaire, codingrules, and sample structure. Mean digital financial literacy was 61.00 and the mean service used was 54.64. Thetwo indices showed a significant positive relationship, r = .552, 95 percent CI [.479, .618], p < .001. UPI was themost popular out of the different services, while the level of non-use was highest for digital lending. But thenumber one challenge, according to Garrett ranking, was fear of fraud, with difficulty in complaint resolution,and lack of product knowledge coming next. Challenge severity differed across occupations, F (6, 377) = 3.68, p =.001. It was found that the availability of infrastructure was not the biggest constraint. The central problem wastrust, ability to seek redress, product understanding and occupation specific exposure. Consumer education,transaction practice, and navigation in the event of a fraud or redressal therefore needs to be integrated in onedesign.