India is still a cash economy but if anything managed to chip away at that, even if just slightly, it has been the rapidly innovating digital wallets industry. Startups including Paytm, Oxigen Services and Mobikwik helped the Indian economy take baby steps towards digitisation, handholding and enticing customers with cashbacks and discounts to make the transition from cash to digital. On February 28, that Rs 12,000-crore digital wallets industry got stranded unable to meet a Reserve Bank of India deadline for collecting information on all customers. In effect, customers who havent furnished all the information required under RBIs full know-your-customer norms will not be able to use their digital wallets (except to use up whatever money remains in their wallets). Collecting all that information, including biometric details, is cumbersome and so far digital wallet providers have managed to gather full KYC details for fewer than 10% of their customers. In other words The biggest advantage that digital wallets, or prepaid payments instruments (PPI), brought was the easy onboarding. All a user had to do was download the app, verify their mobile number, link a bank account through a debit or credit card, and begin transacting. It was as simple as that! Now, customers have to submit photo ID proofs, link their Aadhaar identity numbers, and submit biometric details, making the process almost like opening a bank account. Even so, RBI made full KYC mandatory for digital wallets to reduce fraud in the system and eventually bring in interoperability among the wallets. Digital payments have shown a consistent growth trend in the month of April as well against the number of transactions clocked in March, Reserve Bank of India data shows. While cards and IMPS transactions have maintained the similar trend, mobile wallets which had fallen in March have showing a smart pick up in April, having grown 11% in terms of number of transactions