The purpose of the study is to explore the impact of demonetization on digitization in India. On 8th
Nov. 2016, Indian Government announced Demonetization by abolishing INR.500 and INR.1000
currency notes in the country with an objective to move towards a cashless economy besides check on
black money and other corrective measures. In the short run, it led to temporary derailment of economy
and inconvenience to general public. After initial teething problems like severe cash shortage, there
was a steady growth in digital transactions when people have adopted to different digital payment
modes like Online / Internet banking, ATM facilities, mobile wallets, usage of debit/credit cards and
mobile banking, etc. The authors have taken secondary data from the RBI website from March 2015 to
July 2018 to analyze the impact of demonetization on digitization. An event window of 20 months predemonetization
and 20 months post-demonetization was taken for analysis. The month the event took
place i.e., November 2016 was taken as month ‘0’. Descriptive Statistics, Correlation, t-test, and Trend
Analysis were carried out to analyze the data. Based on the results extracted, the authors have
concluded that there is a significant increase in the usage of various digital payment methods like
RTGS, Retail Electronic Clearing, Prepaid instruments in the post demonetization period with a few
exceptions like Paper Clearing, Mobile Banking and Debit cards.