An inclusive digital cashless society & the fight against pandemics

As the world is uniting in the fight against the corona virus pandemic, this is one of the defining moments that has opened our eyes about the strengths and weaknesses in our global health systems as well as has forced us to rethink about the preparedness for the future. 

The spread of coronavirus or COVID-19, around the world, is happening at an alarming rate, and as a measure many countries have adopted social distancing and self isolation. Think-tanks have started giving second thoughts about the carriers of the virus, including the transaction via cash.

Over different occasions in the past, the system of physical cash transactions has raised concerns about the hygiene and the issues that arise from handling of cash across different mass. But whether it’s a confirmed risk or not, it is definitely a psychological factor. During these troubling times, many have encouraged to go cashless to avoid the risk of pandemic to spread. This also is the right time to think around it and innovate for the ground realities.

Especially in India, even if the government’s vision is around building a cashless society, the roadblocks too that were many. Among these challenges are the facts such as the lack of efficient and user-friendly infrastructure, and communication systems are key.

India has been known as the back office since the inception days of IT and software boom in the country. Also the ratio of mobile phone to the mass is also highest in the world. Despite these great side-notes, it’s also fact that India is home to more than half billion feature phones. Around 2/3rd of the mass still do not have the access to internet in today’s 133 crores plus populated nation.

More than 75% of the business is from un-organized sector across rural and sub-urban cities. And it’s no wonder most of these today still operate through cash.

Though the rise of digital wallets in India have improved the numbers, still to operate these one of the major infrastructure roadblock is from lack of using internet.

To cater to these, government have encouraged USSD based transaction to support the locations without internet.

However, this solution itself had it’s own set of problems contributed by the lower literacy rate to read and write. In addition to USSD, which is limited by a session-time and lack of good experience for the user added to the woes.

We at, BetaBuilds, have been trying to solve these ground challenges and come up with a patent pending approach – OffWallet to improve the adoption by such mass.

OffWallet, is an approach that focuses on bringing cashless experience to these audience by primarily providing seamless experience to this segment.

It provides both online as well as offline (when internet is not available) approach to send and receive money. The experience across the online and offline modes are completely same. Apart from the fact that the OffWallet can be a B2C product for the mass, we have alternative option for the OffWallet solution.

OffWallet can also be provided as an enabler solution for existing wallets in the market to enable them with the power to cater these large mass with the innovative approach to allow transaction without internet.

OffWallet can also be integrated with existing payment gateway systems, banks etc. to bridge the digital divide in India and across the globe.

Please feel free to explore more here: http://betabuilds.com/?page_id=blog 

Also in case you have any questions, comments, please feel free to share. Also, we being a startup, are open to investment opportunities. If you feel that this is cause you would like to be a part or would like to invest, please ping me or write to admin[at]betabuilds[dot]com.

Let’s join hands to build the inclusive digital cashless world together and contribute to fight against the pandemics for today and the coming times.

(Originally published on LinkedIn on March 18, 2020 )