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Opinion
Andy Mukherjee

India Going Cashless Could Be a Model for the World

Companies from Facebook and Tencent to PayPal and Walmart have a keen interest in the outcome of this experiment.

On the move.

On the move.

Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg

India aims to curb cash – but this time it wants to do it properly.

A cashless society wasn’t the original goal of the country’s draconian currency ban in November 2016. But when an acute shortage of banknotes gave a fillip to digital wallets, that purpose was added as an afterthought to justify an act of farcical state overreach.