Exploring Consumer Narratives On Government-Led Secondary Financial Services: Insights From Public And Private Sector Banks In India

Abstract

There is a paradigm shift in the Indian banking sector, particularly in the digital payments ecosystem, driven by government-led initiatives such as UPI, BHIM, and RuPay. These initiatives have reshaped the financial landscape by extending technology to serve consumers through ATMs, credit cards, mobile banking, internet banking, and telebanking. This transformation has reduced the number of consumer visits to banks physically and provided them with an easy and convenient mode of their financial transaction. The financial institutions, such as banks, are facing many challenges in satisfying their consumers and attracting new customers to meet their financial needs and expectations. The present study focuses on various government initiatives aimed at promoting secondary financial services and investigates the consumer perception of secondary financial services initiated by the government. Since the consumers of public sector banks have different opinions when compared with those of the consumers of private sector banks, a study is undertaken to compare and analyse the consumer perception of government initiatives in the adoption of secondary financial services. To investigate consumer awareness and examine their perception towards the availability and accessibility of secondary financial services, a survey questionnaire was designed, and an interview was conducted with 101 respondents. Both qualitative and quantitative data are collected, and primary data is analysed through SPSS software.  A mixed-method approach is employed to analyse the data, and the guidance of the UTAUT framework was used theoretically to interpret the findings and to gain qualitative insights to understand the factors influencing consumer perception of government-led secondary financial services in India. The findings of the study revealed that the public sector banks are highly reliable and are closely aligned with the priorities of the government, whereas private sector banks are meant for innovations in technology and are more into customer-centric services. Therefore, institutional collaboration is suggested to enhance financial inclusion and innovation. The research contributes to the ongoing debate on consumer trust, digital adoption and aims to guide future policy decisions, offer marketing strategies, and promote financial inclusion in the banking sector of India.