Demonetisation: Temple donations fall an estimated 35% in January

Mall works with major temple trusts around the country and helps devotees donate online to them.

According to Mall, the annual donations to temples (including churches, mosques and gurudwaras) grosses over USD 25 billlion.

“Top ten temples in India alone have annual revenues of over Rs 2000 crore. These include Siddhi Vinayak, Tirupati Balaji, Guruvayoor, Shirdi Sai Baba, and others,” says Mall.

Gods turn to Paytm & Freecharge

From introducing e-wallets to setting up of point of sale machines, temples in India are going cashless to let devotees donate.

Temples such as Mumbai’s Shree Sidhivinayak temple and Delhi’s Kalkaji temple started accepting donations through e–wallets soon after PM Narendra Modi announced a ban on old currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1000.

This week, Snapdeal-owned FreeCharge announced a tie-up with 700-year-old Dargah of Khwaja Nizamuddin Auliya in Delhi and Vrindavan’s Chandrodaya Mandir Trust to 'help patrons to donate cashlessly'.

Sudeep Tandon, Chief Business Officer of FreeCharge said, “Use of mobile wallets for donations is probably the greatest advancement in mobile and online fundraising that the non-profit sector will ever experience.”

Though most temples also have POS-based machines, Tandon said anonymous donors are apprehensive.

“People are usually apprehensive about making donations via cash and by entering their credit card details,” said Tandon.

However, as per Mall, a lot of anonymous donations were made prior to December 31, which led to full coffers.

Speaking about the cashless donations Bharatarashbha Dasa, Vice President of Mathura-based Vrindavan Chandrodaya Mandir said: "With the digital revolution and stress on e-enabled payments it is imperative that cultural initiatives like ours get the maximum visibility and thus be available on all e-wallet platforms. We look forward to support from citizens for our initiatives."

Limitations of e-wallets in templesHowever, cashless wallets also have had limitations in temples which receive lakhs of rupees in donations within minutes each day. “Gurudwaras in Delhi are now planning to install GPS enabled POS machines to accept donations as e-wallets were not successful due to their amount limits,” said an official of Delhi Sikh Gurudwara Management Committee who did not wish to be identified. Delhi-based Gurudwara Bangla Sahib is also one of the top donations earning temples in the country besides The Golden Temple.

“Major Gurudwaras were already accepting cashless donations before the demonetisation. As these Gururdwaras have a large number of NRI visitors,” said an unnamed official at Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee which manages The Golden Temple. 

While most of the temples across the country have chosen to go cashless, there is some resistance at Puri-based Jagannath Temple. As per an anonymous official at Jagannath Puri who spoke over the phone, “the “pandas” or priests at Puri’s temple are refusing to accept any sort of digital payment.”

According to a report in Indiatoday, despite the demonetisation the famous hill shrine of Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam of Andhra Pradesh has netted Rs 1,018 crore of cash offerings during 2016.The Lord Balaji temple on the Tirumala-Tirupati hill shrine also managed to add Rs 201 crore to the temple’s revenue after selling around 67.12 online Rs 300 special entry darshan tickets in 2016.As per a report in TOI, TTD will continue to accept old currency notes from devotees and then engage with RBI on honoring them.

Accoring to Goonjan Mall of Online Prasad, the wallets and cashless based payments amount to less than 5 percent of a temple’s earning in India.

Clearly, this is one area which PM Modi will find hard to turn cashless.