Digital Finance Needs Demystifying for Microenterprise Facilitation

For all the effort made to digitize financial services and to promote the use of digital financial services (DFS) there continues to be a major gap amongst the general public in understanding the manner of its use and the benefits that could be derived from these services. The gap is surprisingly wide for the better off sections of the population in India and is even worse for low income people with lower levels of education and higher risk perceptions. This paper sets out the manner in which people are mystified by DFS and the type and intensity of effort needed to improve understanding. Accelerating the process of demystifying DFS for the whole population would bring major benefits in terms of income growth for individuals and through facilitation of microenterprises for the growth of the economy. The paper concludes with what needs to be done.