Book sellers on Avenue Road street side market have jumped on to the mobile wallet bandwagon.
Bengaluru seems to be leading the way in transition to cashless economy. After the British era Russell Market, a popular roadside book market has made a similar shift. Majority of the book sellers on Avenue Road street side market have jumped on to the mobile wallet bandwagon. Several small vendors selling books, both new and used are accepting payments through Paytm.
The vendors claim their business was down by over 50 per cent after the notes ban announcement and that pushed them to give other payment options.
Anand, a book seller says 15 to 20 per cent of his customers make payments using this platform.
“Nobody is carrying cash these days because they are unable to get cash from the ATM. So most of them are using cards and many customers are asking about Paytm. This is very comfortable for all the customers because of the change issue. We can't get change for Rs 2,000 note when customers buy for Rs 200,” said Anand.
Booksellers say that mobile wallet payment options coupled with the gradual increase in the availability of smaller denomination notes has meant that business is slowly recovering.
Customers were surprised to see the digital shift and see it as a relief during the times of note crunch. “I was really surprised with the Paytm accessibility here and that’s what brought me here. As a customer, I think that it might take some time for us to get used to this. I don't think it's bad, I feel it's good”, said a customer, Nandashree NK.
Amidst all this, some of the older vendors have been finding it tough to understand how the platform works, but they want to get used to it as they believe it will be the main mode of payment in coming days.
Earlier in the month, vendors at Central Bengaluru's Russell Market had decided to install more than 200 POS machines to accept payments.