Page 107 - Abhivruddhi

The financial literacy content is readily accepted and adopted by all
the participants. One of the challenges in the shift to digital payments
is that a majority of women fish vendors have joint bank accounts with
their husbands. They fear that they would have to disclose their income to
their husbands who would use this money. Hence it is important to work
with them on financial inclusion and enable opening their individual
bank accounts to enable digital payments to address the shift in customer
behaviour from cash economy.
In one of the wayside markets, the women fish vendors have informally
tied up with the local wada pav seller to receive digital payments on their
behalf which could lead to increased dependency of these women on
the wada pav seller. In another market the women fish vendors have a
community enabled digital payment gateway by tying up with the local
chicken vendor to receive digital payments. This readiness of the shift in
adoption of digital payment to retain customers’ needs to be immediately
addressed by empowering and enabling these women fish vendors to start
using digital payments.
Enabling use of digital technology
Using WhatsApp status for sharing “fish of the day” is easily adopted
by the younger women who own smartphones. They are keen to innovate
and use it for digital marketing and roping in new customers. One of
the best practices shared by a woman fish vendor is taking orders on
WhatsApp and sharing the image of the weight of the fish on the scale
with the customers as evidence. She then cleans and packs the fish and
delivers it to the customers and accepts digital payment. After the training
program a large number of women fish vendor use their feature phones
to call and connect with customers and take orders too! Though many of
the women fish vendors were receptive to the idea of accepting payments
through digital platforms their preference for having cash in hand still
persists amongst the majority. Adoption of digital payments and use of
QR codes is a slow process and needs handholding support.
Financial planning and use of technology as an accelerator to build
resilience
Financial literacy training programs helped women identify needs
and wants, explore savings options and enable better financial planning
for their life cycle needs. Customer segmentation and business planning
activities help in exploring strategies for enhanced income. Overcoming
the fear to use digital technology has led to tracking bank accounts even
with the feature phones, using WhatsApp to market their products.

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