Digital payments took flight in 'shock' economy

Demonetization has led to a mushrooming of digital payment platforms. New players have come into existence, and m-wallet firms like Paytm have seen stupendous growth.

One among the many successful children of demonetization is Happy Loans. Starting operations two months after demonetization was annouced, the micro-digital lending company has had a good start. "Initially, we sat without any business because no one was borrowing. Now we have 4000 million micro customers and have disbursed micro loans worth over Rs 10 crore," said Happy Loans founder, Manish Khera.

MobiKwik was another digital player which benefitted from demonetisation. Bipin Preet Singh, co-founder of MobiKwik, said: "We have grown phenomenally in the past few months and are preparing to serve more than 260 million users."

The cash crunch that many customers faced forced them to turn to digital payment companies. "Demonetization came as shock treatment for the crawling digital payment ecosystem system. Customers were forced to adopt to a new mode of transaction," added Satyam Kumar CEO and co-founder Loantap, a digital lender.