Authors: Md Ashif Karim Assistant Professor, Leeladhar Choure, Vicky Pawar, Shubham Rai
Abstract: The accelerated developments in FinTech and digitization have resulted in a dramatic shift in modern retail trends as consumer purchases have moved from being predominantly made in cash through physical means to becoming entirely digitalized transactions. The current research paper presents an empirical and theoretical analysis of the effect of digital payment mechanisms like Unified Payment Interface (UPI), mobile wallets, buy now pay later (BNPL) schemes, credit/debit cards, and Internet banking on online consumer purchase behaviors. Using descriptive and analytical research design, the current study explores the influence of major characteristics of digital payment interface, including perceived ease of use, transaction time, perceived security, promotional offers (cash-backs and discounts), and deferred payment options on psychological drivers of purchases like impulsive buying, reduced cart abandonment, loyalty towards brands, and total spend. The data was collected via the use of a structured questionnaire distributed to a sample size of N=450 individuals that actively use online shopping in metropolitan and semi-urban locations, with secondary data from financial databases and e-commerce institutions. The quantitative methods that were used to test five major hypotheses include exploratory factor analysis (EFA), multiple linear regressions, and structural equation modeling (SEM). From the empirical results, it becomes clear that perceived ease of use and instant payment are strongly correlated with the impulsive online buying process, which helps reduce cognitive costs related to expenditure. Robust security measures and smooth payment procedures are able to significantly minimize the incidence of abandoned shopping carts in e-commerce. On the other hand, delayed payment methods such as BNPL have an evident predisposition to increasing the amount of purchases made by young consumers, although there is an issue of over-indebtedness.
