In this article, we will see why digital payment is not always the ideal payment system. Recently, Digital Payment system seems to have gained lot of ground particularly in a country like India where most of the payments will be done through different digital payments apps such as Google Pay, Paytm, PhonePe, BharatPe etc. While this has created a new revolution towards making country’s economy as digital by doing all the payments digitally but at the same time it has created a lot of downside risk as well which I feel needs to be dealt on urgently basis before we start loosing the momentum.

Why Digital Payment is not always the ideal Payment System

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If you also been using digital payment system then you might understand what is that I am talking about. To go through the problem involved, let me give you a quick example which happened with me as well. Usually, when we go to market to buy something then for the payment we scan the code shared by the retailer or shopkeeper through any of the apps such as BharatPe, Paytm, PhonePe, Google Pay etc. We provide the amount and after entering pin number correctly amount gets deducted from the linked bank account. This is the ideal way to make the payment digitally.

But if you notice sometimes if you try to do payments during weekend then your payment gets stuck at the processing stage and it will ask you to wait till bank confirm the payment. Now if you went to buy some product then usually you don’t have much time to wait. You would like to complete the payment quickly and move ahead. But if your payment gets stuck then you have to wait till a confirmation is given. This might take anywhere between 5 mins to even 24 hrs. Something similar happened to me as well.

Now if you bought the product, you have to complete the payment. But since the digital payment is stuck and you don’t know when bank confirmation will come then you don’t have any choice but to make the payment through other means, that is via cash, debit card, credit card etc.

If later on, payment gets failed then it is fine but in case payment gets confirmed then this will cause a loss to product buyer as he/she paid the amount twice for the same product. It is also possible that you might be able to convince shopkeeper or retailer that the payment will be confirmed soon then you do not have to pay through other means and you just leave the place. In that case, if the payment gets failed then the loss will be suffered by the seller.

The point here is that in any case a loss will be registered to either side due to this processing issue. Now the real question is why does it happen? Well, most of the time during weekends bank runs maintenance window in which they bring down their systems for maintenance which results into payment gateway not receiving any response from bank immediately. This causes payment to go in processing state. Not only this there could be numerous other reasons which can make the payment stuck.

Hence it is important to understand while the digital payment is a convenient way to pay where you do not have to take the burden of carrying cash but at the same time it tends to cause a lot of problems to users when the payment is stuck and does not get confirmed immediately. I just hope this problem gets resolved as soon as possible to make the payment system hazzle free.