NEW DELHI:
The tech giant, Apple, launched two company-owned stores in India last year. One in Mumbai and another in Delhi. These two stores in India have a direct reporting line to the Apple retail team in the US. Other Apple Indian stores have to report to Apple India Sales Operations. The former sales are also included in the global financial records. Among all the hurdles which this tech giant might have expected in their meeting, the cash inflow must have been at the bottom of it. The company had to install currency-counting machines to efficiently analyse the amounts that were given in cash by the customers. When India is riding high on the wave of digital transactions, American company Apple is hurdling with a problem of cash inflow. In India, cash circulation has also seen a huge increase. It was Rs 13.35 lakh crore in March 2017, which increased to Rs 35.15 lakh crore in March 2023. Despite the increase in digital payments through UPI in the country, the popularity of cash has still not decreased.
According to a report, cash payment accounts for 7-9 percent of the total sales in Apple stores in India. The number of customers paying cash in Apple’s Delhi store is more than in Mumbai. The share of cash payment in the company’s stores in the US or European countries is less than one percent. In some foreign stores, cash payment is zero.
The quest to buy Apple products with cash has been buzzing on the social media interactive platform, Quora. Many inquired about the cash payments in the Apple stores. They posted questions like, how can they buy Apple products in cash, how much is allowed and others.
The government in India has taken several steps to encourage digital payments. The government has imposed a limit of Rs 2 lakh per person per day on cash transactions since 2017.
In April 2024, UPI payments grew by 50.11 percent on an annual basis. Last month, 1,330 crore UPI transactions took place. During this period, a total amount of Rs 19.64 lakh crore was transferred. During the entire financial year, that is from April 2023 to March 2024, more than 13,068 crore transactions took place. Through these transactions, people transacted Rs 199.95 lakh crore. This is 43.68 percent more than the financial year 2022-23.
