How to save money while online shopping ?

Online shopping and e-commerce has exploded in India for the past few years and it is good for the consumers.

Let's look at how it would benefit the consumer while save money.

Comfort:

One of the best advantages of shopping online is comfort.
A typical shopping experience in physical stores would be to plan for where to go, how to go, hassle of driving or booking a cab, spending time and energy, standing in queues etc.

However online shopping makes it easy for one to just open a browser, select the item needed and pay for it using a credit/debit card, wallet or have Cash on Delivery.

Savings:

Almost always these days you can find an item cheaper online. Whether it be a mobile, electronics, books or anything else.

How are the companies able to provide such discounts ?

One, they are being efficient but the bigger reason is that they are subsidising the costs for consumer so they can grow their business.

It doesn't matter at the end of the day. Consumer is looking for the best offer and online websites provide it.



How to find a good discounted offer:

There are a number of ways to find the best price online.

Comparison engines: Mysmartprice, Use an extension like BuyHatke
Deals websites: DesiDime, CouponDunia
Cashback websites: GoPaisa

I will detail some of the above in a post later.

Use the resources available for you to get the best deal out of your shopping. However make sure you don't become an addict for things.

What is UPI and how to use it ?

In our regular day to day transactions we want to move our money across our accounts, make payments and transfer it to others.

However it isn't very convenient in the old technologies like NEFT, RTGS, IMPS.
One has to know the IFSC code, Bank Name, Name of the account holder and a number of details to make the money transfer happen.

To simplify this experience and work seamlessly between a number of accounts NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India) has come up with a technology that makes it easy for consumers.

UPI (Unified Payments Interface) is the interface that allows it.
According to NPCI below is the description for UPI

Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is a system that powers multiple bank accounts into a single mobile application (of any participating bank), merging several banking features, seamless fund routing & merchant payments into one hood. It also caters to the “Peer to Peer” collect request which can be scheduled and paid as per requirement and convenience.

I will briefly explain the method and how to use it taking an example of PhonePe which is one the UPI apps available.

PhonePe is a wallet/UPI application associated with flipkart.
You can have a look at the website here and install the app from here.

Once you install the app it asks you to do some initial setup and set a password for security.

You should create a VPA (Virtual Payment Address) using the app. This is key as it resolves most of the problems with money transfers.

To give you an analogy VPA is like an email address. Once you sign up with your UPI app and create a VPA anybody can simply send you money by using your VPA address.


Next step is to associate bank accounts you want to operate UPI app with. When you goto Bank Accounts menu and select Add New Bank Account it presents you an option to add your bank to associate with PhonePe. The screen looks like below.

It shows you a list of banks to add from which support UPI.
Select a bank account and it will automatically fetch the details of the bank account based on the mobile number associated to your PhonePe account.

All you have to do is set a mpin for the bank account if its not already set so that you can use that bank account securely for your UPI transactions.

You are all set now. You can do a slew of things a shown below:

You can send money / request money which are basic operations.

To send money you just click on send, add a VPA or a bank account and just send money to them. It's that simple.

Feel free to explore the app. It is intuitive and you can use it to pay your bills, recharge mobile/DTH etc.

Similar to PhonePe there are a number of UPI apps that banks now offer. Some of the banks are Yes Bank, SBI, Axis Bank, ICICI.