Demographic and Economic Impact of FinTech Services on Street Vendors: A Case Study of Rajouri District of Jammu and Kashmir

Chaitna Heer; Jatinder Kumar

doi:10.36948/ijfmr.2026.v08i04.83339

Demographic and Economic Impact of FinTech Services on Street Vendors: A Case Study of Rajouri District of Jammu and Kashmir

Author(s)	Ms. Chaitna Heer, Dr. Jatinder Kumar
Country	India
Abstract	India’s digital payment ecosystem has expanded at an unprecedented pace, with the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) processing nearly 70 billion transactions in 2022 and the RBI Digital Payments Index reaching 418.77 in March 2024. Yet the diffusion of Financial Technology (FinTech) within the informal economy — which contributes 45–50% of national GDP and employs over 90% of the workforce — remains uneven, particularly in semi-urban and geographically peripheral districts. This paper examines the demographic and economic impact of FinTech services on street vendors of Rajouri District in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir. Using primary data collected through a structured personal-interview questionnaire from 384 street vendors across four tehsils — Rajouri, Thanna-Mandi, Nowshera and Sunderbani — selected using Cochran’s formula and convenience sampling, the study applies frequency analysis, descriptive statistics, paired-samples t-test, and One-Sample t-tests (test value = 3) in IBM SPSS Statistics v26. Findings show that 75.0% of vendors use UPI, 94.3% transact digitally at least sometimes, and 72.1% transact daily. After FinTech adoption, the share of vendors earning below ₹10,000 per month fell from 57.0% to 7.3%, while those earning above ₹20,000 rose from 7.9% to 38.3%; the paired-samples t-test confirms this shift as highly significant (t(383) = −32.538, p < 0.001). All eight null hypotheses formulated for the study are rejected at the 5% level of significance, providing statistical evidence that vendor perception is significantly positive, that FinTech adoption significantly improves the economic position of vendors, and that demographic characteristics — age, gender, education and area of residence — significantly differentiate adoption behaviour. Fear of fraud (M = 3.48), technical glitches (M = 3.37), and limited knowledge (M = 3.26) emerge as the most binding residual barriers, while hardware and cost barriers have been largely overcome. The study contributes original district-level evidence from a semi-urban Himalayan context that is largely absent from existing FinTech adoption literature and offers evidence-based policy recommendations for deepening digital financial inclusion among informal-sector micro-entrepreneurs.
Keywords	FinTech adoption, UPI, street vendors, financial inclusion, demographic determinants, economic impact, informal sector, Rajouri District, Jammu and Kashmir, PM-SVANidhi
Field	Sociology > Banking / Finance
Published In	Volume 8, Issue 4, July-August 2026
Published On	2026-07-09
DOI	https://doi.org/10.36948/ijfmr.2026.v08i04.83339

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Demographic and Economic Impact of FinTech Services on Street Vendors: A Case Study of Rajouri District of Jammu and Kashmir

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