Analysing the Impact of Demonetisation on Digital Payments in India

Demonetisation is defined as an act of invalidating the legal tender status of a currency and it renders the currency worthless for exchange. The Government of India announced the demonetisation of two of the country’s highest denomination notes, INR 500 and INR 1000, in November 2016. The announcement was very sudden and was implemented immediately, leaving the entire country in a state of shock. India being majorly cashdependent economy, the sudden change led to a severe disruption in most of the economic sectors including payments. Various studies have analysed the impact of demonetisation on digital payments. While most existing studies show that demonetisation led to a drastic improvement in the usage of digital payment services, the findings are mostly based on the immediate impact. This research presents a thorough analysis to determine the impact of demonetisation on digital payments in India. The methods such as segmented regression, dynamic regression models and ARIMA-intervention analysis using transfer function models are used. The findings of this research indicate that while there was an instantaneous growth in the number of digital payment transactions after demonetisation, the growth was only about 10% and has not been extremely high. There was no significant change in the amount of transactions done via digital payments. This research, therefore, concludes that demonetisation has not been very effective in driving the nation towards digitalisation