Digital India Digital Economy Using Blockchain Technology
Kalpana Sunil Thakre, Gargi Kulkarni, Prajwal Sameer Deshmukh · 2022
In November 2016, India decided to take on probably the most herculean task that a country could face: Demonetization. This move was initiated with not one, but a wide array of motives such as ridding India of its black money, ensuring fair collection of tax for unaccounted cash and to make India a cashless economy. Millions of Indians turned towards digital payments for everything from buying groceries to paying periodic utility bills. Unified Payments Interface, or UPI, was created with the sole purpose of enabling interoperability. But as is usually the case with well-designed systems, UPI has unleashed a tsunami of economic potential along the way. While UPI is making digital payments the new normal for the citizens of India, there is one concern that stands out: the safety of people’s hard-earned money stored in a centrally monitored database. The centralization of a database is easy to monitor, but it compromises the protection of money against hackers. This article focuses on online transaction systems that make use of the blockchain technology and its features, namely distributed database, Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) and Secure Hash Algorithm 256 (SHA-256) to make the cashless payment system more robust to cyber security threats. As the outcome, a more secure and reliable model for a digital payment wallet service using blockchain technology has been developed.