AWARENESS AND PERCEPTION OF MEDIUM AND SMALL RETAILERS TOWARDS CASHLESS TRANSACTIONS IN GUWAHATI

The concept of cashless economy in India is focused around the objective of transforming the country into a society, which is digitally enabled and empowered by various modes of cashless transaction. The idea of cashless economy is to keep the usage of cash at minimum. India is one of the few countries where the usage of cash is most. It is only after demonetisation most of the people have started using plastic money in the form of debit card/credit card etc. The government has been taking initiatives to promote e-payment, plastic transaction and cashless payment. Cashless transaction brings greater transparency, ease and convenience in monetary transaction. At the same time, non cash transaction reduces flow of black money to some extent and also increases liquidity in the banking system which will eventually lead to development of the Indian economy. With the expansion of telecommunications, increased number of smart phone users and innovations of large number of digital payment platform like Paytm, UPI APPs, mobile wallets, smart card etc usage of non cash transaction have increased. India is in transition to become cashless society. However, Indian retail sector is still ascendant over cash transaction. A large number of small and medium scale retailers still prefer cash transaction. The participation and willingness of retailers to adopt cashless transaction is of prime importance in the movement towards cashless economy as the volume of monetary transaction in the retail sector is very high. The objective of the study is to ascertain the awareness of small and medium sized retailers of Guwahati regarding digital payment and their attitude towards cashless transaction. Further the study aims to find out what according to retailers are the benefits and problems of using digital payment method. The study covers two aspectsone, how retailers are accepting payment from consumers and second, how they are making payment to suppliers.