Buying gold online in India may not be the way you’re used to doing things traditionally, but it might solve a lot of your current problems when it comes to buying gold! Like with most things in the digital and ecommerce space – trust, customer experience, convenience and flexibility should be at the forefront of the decision.
People don’t only buy gold because it is considered auspicious during many Indian festivals or to flaunt it as a status symbol. Often, it is for investment purposes or make some desirable ornamental jewellery. But, must gold purchase only be done with jewellers? What about the newer trend where more people are beginning to say the best option is to buy gold online in India! There’s a lot of options out there now and they all come with their own respective pros and cons.
You should go ahead with what suits your needs, preferences, investment plans, etc. the best. But there are certain things you should keep in mind in each case, in order to make your decision with your eyes wide open. Here’s a quick summary of different options below:
- Jewellery: If you’re sure about what you want, go right ahead! But do pay attention to the following – be comfortable with the cost of making charges, confirm purity of your gold by checking for the Hallmark, familiarize yourself with the return/buy-back policy and ensure that you get a receipt! It’s not great to recover value when you sell, but if that’s not the plan, just make sure you get what you pay for and protect your purchase with official documentation!
- Coins, Bars & Biscuits: While these don’t have the ornamental value of jewellery, it’s just as functional when it comes to the more traditional festive requirements. You also have the added benefit of getting a higher purity of gold here with 24-karat options as compared to jewellery where it is 22, 18 or 14-karat. Did you know that you could invest in gold online by conducing your gold coin online shopping from the comfort of your own home if you used digital gold wallets like SafeGold? In addition to gold coins, people are showing interest in purchasing gold biscuits online. Another plus point in favour of buying gold bars, gold biscuits and gold coins online, is that they are all 24-karat gold options!
- Digital Gold: Gold purchase in any format is auspicious, including digital gold, but unlike the other options here, digital gold offers by far the most flexibility.
- Trust & Safety: Unlike physical gold, your purchases here are safe from theft or loss. SafeGold for example, works with partners such as Brink’s India, to ensure that your gold is stored securely in their world-class vaults, and SEBI registered IDBI Security Trustees, whose role it is to protect the customer’s interests at all times.
- Convenience: You can also buy digital gold at a moment’s notice from your mobile phone
- Options to Convert: You can convert your investment into 24-karat coins, bars and biscuits whenever you want to and take physical delivery at your doorstep. You can also take your digital gold holdings and redeem them with Jewellery partners as in the case with SafeGold.
- Sell: You can sell your gold at the exchange rate and never lose out on sunken costs on making charges, etc. like with jewellery.
- Gift: A newer concept, but gifting gold is through a few taps on your phone is a reality! It has far more emotional value than most regular gifts, while also leaving the receiver with all the options in this section.
- Flexibility: You can buy as little as 1-rupee worth of gold, let alone a gram! It’s very conducive to piecemeal investing and even offers Gold SIPs!
- Gold Investment: A very investment focused option, Gold Exchange Traded Fund (ETFs) & Sovereign Gold Bonds (SGBs) have some unique features that are worth noting.
- Liquidity: Gold ETF’s are very liquid and trades on the stock exchange, with less potential for loss of value than buying-selling physical gold in short periods of time.
- Safety: ETFs and SGBs are kept in the dematerialised form and held in the DEMAT account, which is safe and easy to handle.
- Tax: Just like the other options, by holding for 3 years, you can become eligible for long term capital gain. However, the real benefit with SGBs are that if you hold till maturity and redeem after that, all of your gain is tax exempt.
- Flexibility: You can buy as little as 1 gram of gold, but we’re talking bigger investment amounts in this category.
If you don’t know which option is best for you, why not consider keeping your options open, by buying digital gold with all its features and flexibility? Sometimes digital gold players like SafeGold offer special discounts on free delivery, no making charges, gold back offers (which work exactly like cashback offers, except with gold) and many more!
- Its accessible immediately, just like physical gold.
- It can be converted into physical gold coins as required with home delivery as well!
- It’s also the best investment option, with possibly the best gold-buying rates from all the options, and also offers you all the flexibility you want with your money!
