Indians prefer ‘touch and feel’ shopping over online festive sales during Diwali: VISA Study

• Visa recently released report on consumer expenditure for the week leading Diwali using Visa payments — Debit and credit cards.
  
• The report revealed that Indians preferred face to face shopping over online purchase transactions.
  
• Dhanteras recorded double the transactions made during a regular week amounting to ₹29 billion.

Visa, the American multinational financial services company, released consumer data on how users in India spent their money this Diwali.

Their report, shared exclusively with Business Insider India, shows that consumers preferred to shop offline during the festive season despite the convenience and sales offered by online retailers.

TR Ramachandran, the Group Country Manager for India & South Asia at Visa, stated, “Our study has thrown up some very interesting and encouraging insights on consumer spending habits. While e-commerce continues to make strong inroads in India, for key occasions and festivities citizens still prefer a personalized experience, accompanied by ‘touch-and-feel’.”

He also said that, “In addition, the higher debit penetration by spend from the smaller cities, validates the healthy progress of the nation towards a less-cash society.”

Another study by Redseer Consulting, on the other hand, shows that online retailers, like Flipkart and Amazon, made the highest sales over the festive days this year.

Breaking down the numbers

Annually, debit Visa cards account for 69% of total transactions while credit cards contribute to 28%. But, during the week prior to Diwali, credit and debit cards accounted for 50% and 48% of transactions, respectively.

In fact, during the week leading to Diwali, transactions amounting to ₹79 million were carried out on Visa, which is a 49% increase over last year.

Dhanteras, in particular, recorded double the transactions made during an average week amounting to ₹29 billion.

The largest contributions to the festive vibe were from Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai accounting for 46% of the total face-to-face (F2F) consumer spending.

The data indicates that while people may prefer shopping offline, they still choose to use digital payments over cash transactions.