Tag: cash

Migrating away from cash is intimidating – Stickiness of Cash Part 2

Ask any payment professional, and while they might disagree on what’s the best payment experience, they would all agree that Cash is sticky.

And one of the core reasons for the stickiness of cash is that the migration journey is intimidating for most cash-heavy users.

Too many choices

Here are some of the many questions the cash users who want to migrate away from cash, grapple with:

  • Is it safe to use a card for payments
  • Should I use a separate card for ATM withdrawals and purchases
  • What should I start using – prepaid, debit, credit , mobile wallets
  • If it’s a card, should I go for a basic, gold, platinum or some other variant
  • Should I get a product with shopping benefits or one with fuel? or the one with air-miles
  • Should I take a Visa or a MasterCard or a Rupay
  • I have accounts with multiple banks, whose product do I begin with
  • How do I apply for the card? Can I apply online, or do I go to the bank branch?
  • What is a UPI or IMPS payment? How do I do that? What is the fees on the transactions?

…….And it goes on and on.

The simple fact is that there are way too many products with different features, brands, offers,benefits and form-factors. It is a tough choice to make.

And post demonetization, most banks are  show-casing ALL their products in each of their ads. Leaving it to the consumer to pick and choose.

I have seen Mumbai buses covered with ads, that have all the digital payment instruments from that bank. Not sure if most consumers even know what those mean.

 

The famous Malcolm Gladwell research on choices, happiness and spaghetti sauce also harps on the risk of too many choices.

The migration away from cash, has to be made easier with fewer choices or a recommended path to walk on (recommendation itself coming from a trusted partner).

In the absence of this, most consumers prefer a wait-and-watch stance. And the product(s) with simpler choices and/or more brand-ambassadors will see higher adoption. No wonder, many a millennial adopted the mobile wallets. There were no variants of PayTM, Mobikwik etc.

And this brings us to the other point.

Hurdles in the migration

Ok, so you have a cash-user who is convinced about that one digital payment from your bank. How does she go about getting started?

Do you remember the forms you filled to get your first credit card.

I remember that during my Deal4Loans days, the card application forms used to have almost 50+ fields across some 4-5 stages of the online application for most banks.

While the consumer on-boarding has come a long way in the digital era, it still is complicated for many products/banks. Unless the consumer is really convinced about this migration, why would they jump through so many hoops to get the product.

The access and on-boarding has to be simpler. A convinced consumer should be active on Day 0 if not within Hour 1.

In my opinion, if we are serious about displacing cash, we need to make the transition a simpler choice for the consumers.

What do you think?

This is part 2 in a series of posts where I try to understand why Cash is sticky? What are the some of the obvious things, we may have overlooked in our zeal to digitize payments.

Here’s part 1 , where my humble submission is that Cash is not really the enemy. Atleast not in the eyes of the consumers.

Cash is not the enemy – Stickiness of Cash Part 1

Why is cash so sticky in our society?

Many of us have argued for the need to build convenience, security and ubiquity for digital payments. And then cash would start receding. No debate there.

But we forget that as individuals our brains are wired to go back to cues that are triggered at the sub-conscious level. We are not always the rational individuals economists would have us to be. Our decisions are influenced more by emotions.

CASH IS NOT THE ENEMY

To appeal at the emotional level, we need either a villain or a hero.

While bankers and payment professionals would disagree with me, but for most Indians cash is NOT the enemy. Consider this:

  • The currency carries images of Mahatma Gandhi, of the National Emblem and now of Mangalyaan etc. These are symbols of national pride. We are wired to feel proud to hold a piece of paper with these images on it.
  • We have traditionally celebrated an auspicious occasion with gifting loved ones with money. This association of gifting currency with happy moments is also tough to break anytime soon. Again deeply rooted positive connect.
  • When the Prime Minister announced the ban of old currency notes, the villain being chased was corruption. Not cash. So we never really took the storyline that cash is bad.

I don’t think any country would even want to walk down the path of trying to build a negative connotation with its currency.

Hence a story where cash is the villain may not work. We need something else to pitch Digital Payments at an emotional level.

This is part 1 in a series of posts where I try to understand why Cash is sticky? What are the some of the obvious things, we may have overlooked in our zeal to digitize payments.

Here’s part 2 , wherein I talk about why its a tough journey moving away from cash – too many choices and a hurdle-ridden on-boarding process.