NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Are you sure you want to do this? Richa, my wife asked as I shared my idea to undertake an experiment in which I will stop using cash and instead use only digital forms of payment.

Colleagues said going cashless in India is difficult and that I wouldn’t be able to manage more than a week.

All this and the fundamental question “As a believer in digitization of cash, am I just propagating the theory or do I really understand the consumer side of story?” With this started the quest to understand “Cashlessness” first hand. In this process many a times the challenges looked insurmountable – but then what is the point of a journey if it doesn’t challenge you.

The first phase of the journey started in Singapore where I travelled without carrying Singapore Dollars and lived without physical manifestation of money for 5 days i.e. paid for every transaction using card (and it was not easy as every time I boarded a cab or entered a restaurant I had ask if they accept card) and then as I completed the phase, a friend posed the same question “Singapore is a city nation. Do you think you can live without cash for a month in India?”

Thus on 13th March 2016 started “Living without cash” journey in Mumbai.