The motive behind Prime Minister Narendra Modi gone for demonetization is to make sure that India moves towards digital economy by increasing cashless transactions. The very spirit of digital economy is no more applicable and is losing the steam gradually because of increased cash availability in market and banks levying unnecessary charges on card transactions.
According to Reserve Bank of India representative data, digital transactions in February 2017 are 100 million lesser than those done in December 2016 at point of sale counters through bank cards.
Despite Governments (Centre and State) increased the point of sale machines, ATMs and mobile wallets in market, this has not helped in increasing the number of transactions. One more report says, mobile transactions fell from 70 million transactions in December 2016 to 55 million transactions in February 2017. Wallet transactions are dropped by 20 per cent in the same period.
Now that people have successfully crossed the cash crunch situation aftermath demonetization, no one is looking at card payments, digital wallets and online transactions. All in all, the digital economy initiative lost the initial enthusiasm and ditched the card payments.