Digital divas: The smartphone holds her purse strings

Gone are the steel-trunk and sari-fold savings. Increasingly, the Indian woman's household treasury lives inside a smartphone

One recent afternoon in Noida, 58-year-old Sumi Rai paid her monthly kitty contribution by scanning a QR code at a restaurant. A few years ago, she would have carried cash in her purse or asked her husband to transfer the money. Today, Rai uses UPI herself.“I wanted to feel independent,” she says, after finally persuading her family to install a payments app on her phone.

Her story captures a quiet shift underway across India. According to the National Family Health Survey-6 (NFHS-6), conducted in 2023-24, 64.3 per cent of Indian women have used the internet, up from 33.3 per cent in the previous survey (2019-21). Women operating their own bank accounts have increased from 78.6 per cent to 89 per cent, while those owning a mobile phone that they use themselves have risen from 53.9 per cent to 63.6 per cent.

Taken together, the figures point to a transformation that goes beyond technology. For generations, women often managed household finances through cash envelopes, gold jewellery and informal savings. Increasingly, money now lives on a smartphone.

Consider Shikha Dutta-Sen, a 33-year-old home cook in New Delhi. Her salary arrives directly into her bank account. Every month, she pays electricity bills, transfers money to her parents, tracks expenses through a banking app and even invests in a mutual fund SIP.

Earlier, household finances were largely handled by her father and later her husband. Today, she knows exactly how much money is available, where it is being spent and how much is being saved.

The shift is visible even among women running small businesses. Rumi Kaur, a 29-year-old tailoring entrepreneur in Greater Noida, says digital payments helped her separate household and business finances. Customers increasingly pay through QR codes. The digital trail has made it easier to track income and qualify for small loans. What was once cash in a drawer is now transaction history.

Researchers argue that this distinction matters. Leora Klapper, Lead Economist at the World Bank, has repeatedly stated that financial inclusion is not simply about opening bank accounts. It is about giving women “greater privacy, security and control over” their money. She notes that when women gain access to financial services, they are more likely to build savings, invest in opportunities and spend on their children’s education.

The change is also altering power dynamics inside households. Traditionally, many women managed day-to-day spending but remained excluded from formal financial systems such as banking, lending and investments. Smartphones are bridging that gap. “My husband is supportive of this. My independence reduces his burden; it doesn’t threaten him,” says Dutt-Sen.

Yet the transition remains incomplete. Digital access has grown rapidly, but adoption still lags ownership. Industry leaders note that women remain underrepresented among digital payment users. Nalin Bansal, chief of relationship management and key initiatives at the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), said last year that only about a quarter of payment users were women, highlighting the difference between financial access and active usage.

That milestone may be the next frontier. For now, the NFHS-6 figures suggest that India has largely solved the first problem: getting women financially connected digitally. The challenge now is converting connectivity into confidence and use.

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Published By:

Yashwardhan Singh

Published On:

Jun 18, 2026 17:33 IST