Demonetization – Immediate Impact on Online Transactions and Usage of Mobile Wallets

Abstract

When COD has been one of the popular payment option for significant portion of Indian Society who shop online, the present cash crunch after ban on Rs 500 and  Rs 1000 notes has created inconvience to Indian consumers. The entire nation lined up to exchange/deposit currency outside banks and ATMs. The online sites like Flipkaft, Amazon, Snapdeal suffered huge change in their revenue soon after demonetization due to undelivered orders and suspension of COD orders. To cope up with problem of cash crunch people have begun to fill up then mobile wallets resulting in the growth of the mobile wallet provisions such as Paytm and free charge. The shopping sites too have started giving big discounts, offering gift cards and free-paid offers. The paper examines the immediate impact of demonetization on online shopping trends as well as the preference of the people for various  mobile wallets particularly in Ludhiana city of Punjab.