The Paired Role of Online Promotion with Mobile Payments in Crisis Relief Fund: Evidence from COVID-19 Pandemic in India

When developing nations suffer from crises and disasters, it becomes urgent and critical to raise relief funds rapidly with the engagement of a greater number of donors. Digital technology has repeatedly aided in crisis and disaster management. On one hand, online promotions help in influencing citizens for donations, whereas mobile payments provide a mechanism for quick transfer of funds. In this paper, we study how online promotions that are notified through mobile payment apps, can be a pair of technology enabling successful and rapid fund transfer, thereby offering protective security (Sen, 2001). We conduct semistructured field interviews from 24 participants across India during the Covid-19 pandemic. We then examine, through interpretive research, the role of the two technologies in combination amidst the Covid-19 crisis in India and draw implications for relief fund collection mechanisms. Overall, the findings suggest that ‘protective security’ is established as users note the convenience of transferring relief funds through mobile wallets, but ‘transparency’ is questionable with many subjects expressing their trust concerns for the third-party providers of mobile payments.