The global financial ecosystem has witnessed a fundamental bifurcation in the trajectory of digital banking adoption. While developed economies such as the United States and the United Kingdom underwent a gradual, sequential transition from cash to card-based systems and eventually to mobile applications, India experienced a hyper-accelerated “leapfrog” phenomenon. Catalysed by the 2016 Demonetization, the advent of ultra-cheap 4G internet via Jio, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the launch of the zero-fee Unified Payments Interface (UPI), millions of Indian consumers bypassed plastic card infrastructure entirely and adopted mobile-first banking as a daily utility. This empirical study investigates the behavioural drivers sustaining this adoption among 105 active digital banking consumers in urban and semi-urban India, using a structured quantitative survey. The study analyses consumer trust in high-value transactions, dependency reduction on physical banking infrastructure, usage of advanced financial services, justification of continuous use despite cyber fraud risks, and the comparative perception of India’s digital payment ecosystem against developed nations. Key findings reveal that 83.8% of respondents identify 24x7 operational availability as the core driver; 70.5% prefer mobile banking for transactions above ₹10,000; 77.1% report reduced reliance on physical banking infrastructure; and 57.1% believe India is ahead of nations like the US and UK in daily digital payments. The study concludes that mobile banking in India has matured beyond basic micro-transactions into a comprehensive financial super-app ecosystem, representing a permanent structural shift in consumer financial behaviour rather than a transient, fee-driven anomaly.

 Keywords— Mobile Banking; Unified Payments Interface (UPI); Digital Financial Inclusion; Consumer Behaviour; FinTech; Leapfrog Effect; Zero-MDR; Digital Public Infrastructure.