Smart Living

Smart Living through Financial Innovations – An overview

Innovation is the order of the day now. Come any sphere of life and there are found end number of innovations invading it. And it is rightly so as the homosapiens are the most creative of all creatures in the universe. Every innovation has led to efficiency and effectiveness in operations and convenience and ease in life and its activities. Necessity is said to be mother of all inventions. Therefore every innovation has in its root one or the other need of the hour. During the last little over two decades i.e. end 20^th century and beginning of 21^st century has unleashed a number of scams most of which have been related to financial transactions. These scams gripped the society like anything and crippled the life badly. Hence it may not be an exaggeration to infer that financial innovations kicked off 21^st century to arrest many devils of the society and to cause smart living of its people and enterprises.

Discrepancies bound life:

Human civilization commenced trade through barter system where goods used to be exchanged physically with each other. However with growth in civilization it was found difficult and inconvenient to continue the barter system and people thought of inventing some common means of transaction. Thus came the currencies which facilitated trade and commerce anytime and anywhere. People started exchanging their goods with currencies and at a later point, even currencies with currencies as in case of loans etc. This physical form of exchange led to scope of discrepancies in the financial transaction including the most prominent under the table dealings. This is how came the concept of greasing the palms of the power-that-be. This led to large scale corruption in the society.

Financial innovations:

If the transaction in physical form of currencies created all the discrepancies then the only answer of it was to shift to virtual transaction. This is what exactly followed the philosophy behind all financial innovations. These innovations saw to it that no physical form of currency including bank draft, cheques etc. was involved in any financial transaction thus curtailing the scope of discrepancies. Table no. – 1 given below provides an indicative (and not exhaustive) list of some such innovative financial tools of the present century that led to virtual financial transactions without physically involving the currencies. People get seduced by the eye-catching simplicity, undeniable usefulness, or fun gamification elements of these innovations. May it be different types of cards like debit / credit / ATM / CDM cards or different mechanisms executing financial transactions like internet / online banking / shopping / booking or mobile banking, swapping machine etc.  The amount thus gets transferred from one hand to another hand without physically being in currency form and these transactions are backed by proper evidences that remain for ever for tracing / verifying these transactions, the amounts and the parties involved and in many case(s) the cause(s) of transactions as well. Digitization of securities is in lieu of that. However, this approach too has not been absolutely free from discrepancies as the Satyamdotcom scam case indicates but yet it has brought about transparencies to a great extent.

Table No. – 1: Showing Innovative Financial Tools

S. No.	Innovative Financial Tools	S. No.	Innovative Financial Tools
1.	Plastic Money	12.	Cash Deposit Machine (CDM)
2.	Debit Card	13.	Online Shopping of goods and services
3.	Credit Card	14.	Online Booking of tickets
4.	Automated Teller Machine (ATM)	15.	Self-Help Group (SHG)
5.	Micro Automated Teller Machine  (Micro-ATM)	16.	Micro Finance
6.	Internet / Online Banking	17.	Payment Banks
7.	Mobile Banking	18.	Securities Digitization
8.	Account Transfer through National Electronic Fund Transfer (NEFT)	19.	Smart Cards
9.	Account Transfer through  Real-time Gross Settlement (RTGS)	20.	Apps
10.	Swapping Machine	21.	Mobile wallet
11.	Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT)	22.	Instant Mobile

Payment banks:

One of the issues involved in virtual transaction is the confidentiality of pin number. There has been number of cases reported about cheating and frauds in pin number uses creating concern about safety of financial transaction. Another innovative financial tool has been now in place in form of payment banking that adequately addresses the issue of pin number safety. Payments banks are niche banks set up by the Reserve Bank of India to further the agenda of financial inclusion. With payments banks, the vast segment of customers who have no access to such products will be able to get the advantage of the digital channels and digital technology for regular banking services. The current generic payment applications may not be suitable for all customer segments. With a payments bank account, one may be able to do it through one’s phone which need not even be a smart phone. The use of technology will be critical for payments banks to attract customers. 

Today if one has to transfer money to someone via net banking, one has to first add the person as a beneficiary, with details like bank account number, bank's IFSC code, among other details. With payments banks, one may be able to do this without going through the hassle of adding people, authenticating it through passwords and so on.

While some universal banks have also introduced innovations such as fund transfer through social media like Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp, these have so far not reached the mass audience.

Conclusions:

21^st century has therefore been the century of innovations. And amongst these innovations, financial innovations are leading the lives and activities on this globe, ofcourse, with active support of technological innovations. This paper has presented a snapshot of so far financial innovations but many more are to come in the times ahead and all of these are causing smart living of the people on this earth. However, with every innovation there needs to be created a matching awareness amongst its users as they are the ones who are either the beneficiaries or the victims of these innovations. In this context the role of the government – the regulator of all these financial innovations – becomes very significant as these innovations bring complexities, challenges, risk and novelties apart from ease in dealing with finance.