Are digital payments driven by wealth inequality? Evidence from analysis of the unified payments interface (UPI) adoption in India

Rajesh Gupta, Arjun Anand and Tanya Gupta

Economic Analysis and Policy, 2025, vol. 87, issue C, 1130-1141

Abstract: Though the manifestation of wealth endowment in digital payments technology adoption ranges can have far-reaching socio-economic implications, it remains an understudied area. The unified payment interface (UPI), a dominant digital payment system in India, is examined in this study for the influence of wealth endowment on digital payments executed via UPI in India. Utilizing the Instrumental Variable Quantile Regression (IVQR) method alongside the smooth IVQR method on district-level data, this study addresses endogeneity and heterogeneous treatment effects. The results indicate that income inequality impacts digital payments with a pronounced effect in regions with higher UPI adoption rates.

Keywords: Inequality, Digital payments & UPI (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 O33 R20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0313592625002899
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecanpo:v:87:y:2025:i:c:p:1130-1141

DOI: 10.1016/j.eap.2025.07.014

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Analysis and Policy is currently edited by Clevo Wilson

More articles in Economic Analysis and Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().