A digital payments revolution in India

https://www.economist.com/special-report/2023/05/15/a-digital-payments-revolution-in-india

by saikatsg • 3 years ago

164 114 3 years ago

economist.com

saikatsg• 3 years ago

https://archive.is/I3eAI

toomuchtodo4• 3 years ago

India: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Payments_Interface

Brazil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pix_(payment_system)

US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedNow

cubefox6• 3 years ago

Germany: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giropay

By the way, according the the Wikipedia article, the launch of the US American FedNow service is imminent. I wonder whether it has any chance against the more expensive but widely adopted credit card payments.

toomuchtodo4• 3 years ago

Walmart is already preparing to adopt FedNow payments, and submitted comments during the public comment period.

https://www.pymnts.com/news/retail/2023/walmart-hints-at-ear...

https://www.federalreserve.gov/SECRS/2019/December/20191227/...

__jonas• 3 years ago

but giropay is owned by a private company, not the state or central bank.

also it’s an online payment service, not sure you can use it for direct transfers or in person payments like those others

abdullahkhalids• 3 years ago

Also, Pakistan launched its own last year. Unfortunately, no wiki entry.

https://www.sbp.org.pk/dfs/Raast.html

rnjailamba• 3 years ago

Singapore: FAST - https://www.abs.org.sg/consumer-banking/fast

Thailand: PromptPay - https://www.bangkokbank.com/en/Personal/Digital-Banking/Prom...

Australia: NPP - https://www.rba.gov.au/payments-and-infrastructure/new-payme...

Hong Kong: FPS - https://www.hkma.gov.hk/eng/smart-consumers/faster-payment-s...

Philippines: InstaPay - https://www.instapayph.com/

Mexico: CoDI - https://www.codi.org.mx/

Indonesia: BI-FAST - https://www.bi.go.id/en/publikasi/ruang-media/news-release/P...

martyvis• 3 years ago

NPP is fantastic. (Often referred to as PayID, Fast Payment or Osko, depending on your bank here in Australia). Last Friday I was able to buy an item from a friend while we both standing in his driveway - he confirmed the payment on his account. He just provided his BSB (6 digit bank number) and account and I did the transfer. We both use non major banks. I have used it to settle split bills with colleagues after lunches. Usually you just link your mobile number or email address. All without bank fees or going anywhere near Visa, MasterCard or Paypal and confirmed in under a minute.

toomuchtodo4• 3 years ago

Thanks for sharing these links! If someone wants to start a Wikipedia page enumerating global instant payment systems, I'm happy to chip some fiat in. Email in profile.

codethief• 3 years ago

Europe: SEPA Instant Credit Transfer

https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/what-we-do/sepa-insta...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area#Sche...

So far it hasn't seen widespread adoption, though.

thasaleni• 3 years ago

South Africa: Payshap https://www.payshap.co.za/

nish15003• 3 years ago

When you pay a merchant $100 with your card they get about $97. When this $100 has exchanged hands 50 times only $15 remains. The bank owns the other $85.

Cash is a hassle but it cuts out the middlemen. We need a unified payment system in western countries, but it's almost impossible given how much of a chokehold big banks have over our economy.

Capitalism at its finest.

louwrentius2• 3 years ago

I agree. From what I understood, the Dutch iDeal system (which I love) might become a European standard. It doesn’t cover large parts of the world but I think the fees are not as “insane” as PayPal or systems like this.

aleph_minus_one• 3 years ago

From what I understood, the Dutch iDeal system (which I love) might become a European standard.

What can you tell me about iDeal's privacy aspects? Does it allow anonymous transactions (here it mght make sense to distinguish between

- non-anonymous entity sends money to anonymous entity

- anonymous entity sends money to non-anonymous entity

- anonymous entity sends money to anonymous entity;

"anonymous" is here to be understood as "anonymous to iDeal", i.e. iDeal has no practical chance of de-anonymizing this identity)?

solatic• 3 years ago

You make it sound like the other $85 that the bank got sits in a vault somewhere, extracted from the economy and hoarded in a stockpile. Actually the banks have their own costs (e.g. salaries) and much of the money is further invested. In fact, the natural state is to keep so little cash on hand that Dodd-Frank forced the banks to hoard more than they otherwise were inclined to.

Yes I've oversimplifying a lot of differences (payments infrastructure vs. investment banking, for one) but the point remains. I do think that day-to-day realtime debit-style payments should be a publicly-operated, minimal-or-zero-fee commodity rather than a massive source of rent, but having access to electronic payments for consumer retail is literally responsible for trillions of dollars more economic activity than you would see if we went back to cash-only.

nish15003• 3 years ago

Salaries for what? Marketing? Obscene bonuses? Downtown office buildings? It is a manufactured need.

I am simplifying things but if we had a public owned payments system that wasn't a profit centre the costs would be far less.

Even within the developed world the costs are very different between Europe and the US. Your fees are paying for someone's hefty bonus and lobbying expenses.

Again, it has been proven. UPI works.

wildrhythms• 3 years ago

Why do you believe the investments made by the middlemen processors and banks are more worthy than the investments made by businesses who the consumer is directly patronizing?

thatfrenchguy• 3 years ago

Only in America are fees that high :)

somerandomqaguy• 3 years ago

Plusses and minuses to each system. You don't need to pay the cost of transporting the cash to and from a bank (worst case is armored car transport), and electronic transfers have lower accounting overheads (no need to manually count). And modern credit cards have pretty sophisticated fraud/card theft detection nowadays.

signal117• 3 years ago

UPI has no dispute resolution (as of now). So if you pay with UPI to someone and have a dispute, good luck. You have to approach the Indian courts to get your money back, which, given the Indian justice system, is… difficult.

By contrast, dispute resolution with cards is much easier. Also, I don’t recognise this 3% figure — not in all geographies.

Eg Europe under PSD2 has 0.3% for credit cards, and 0.2% for debit cards. In Canada, Visa and MC recently agreed to a 1% cap.

That said, I’d be very interested in seeing where the conversations around dispute resolution in UPI leads. Context: Indian banks have already begun to complain about UPI being free, and the Indian authorities had to quickly walk back a consultation around potential merchant-side charges to UPI.

I guess this tension between business, customers, and digital intermediaries is what makes payments an interesting space.

vivegi3• 3 years ago

UPI has no dispute resolution (as of now)

Not true. [1]

[1] https://www.npci.org.in/what-we-do/upi/dispute-redressal-mec...

hocuspocus• 3 years ago

The EEA cap on fees only applies to interchange in 4-party schemes, i.e. the part that goes back to the issuing bank. PSPs typically charge between 0.7 and 1.5%. But yes, it's possible to do much better than countries like the US. For starters because card-present fraud is virtually nonexistent, and online fraud is drastically lower thanks to SCA.

That said, you're right, there's a fundamental difference between moving funds in an immutable way (whose marginal price tends to zero) and a payment system.

toomuchtodo4• 3 years ago

Which means bifurcation will occur. Payments where you have high trust and confidence you won’t need a dispute will use UPI or similar instant payment rails. Transactions where you are not confident or are concerned a dispute is going to be required, you’ll pay the transaction fee to use CC rails. Credit cards will become “insured payment” rails for lower trust transactions.

I’d never dispute a payment to my mortgage servicer or electrical utility, but I absolutely might for a rando Facebook ad sale.

1024core2• 3 years ago

UPI has no dispute resolution (as of now).

And cash does??

1024core2• 3 years ago

When this $100 has exchanged hands 50 times only $15 remains.

Just to nitpick: 0.97^50 is 0.21806. So only $21.81 would remain and the banks would have $78.19

nish15003• 3 years ago

I used 2.9% + 30cent for each transaction

cubefox6• 3 years ago

We need a unified payment system in western countries, but it's almost impossible given how much of a chokehold big banks have over our economy.

Credit card companies charge even more than banks.

umeshunni• 3 years ago

Most of the interchange goes to banks.

sunshinerag• 3 years ago

wow Capitalism? Where?

rvz4• 3 years ago

A 'revolution' to on-board users and then airdrop them free money in order for the Reserve Bank of India to deploy their own CBDC on top of UPI. [0] [1]

Just like the catastrophic e-Naira and the widely adopted and dystopian digital Yuan this 'revolution' is all about CBDCs.

India is being a bit more clever in moving everyone in India on to their e-rupee CBDC and using the UPI hype and free money airdrops to do that.

[0] https://techmonitor.ai/policy/digital-economy/nobodys-using-...

[1] https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/what-is-e-rupi-d...

cuteboy193• 3 years ago

Although cbdc is a goal, the main purpose of UPI is simplified digital payments. UPI grew because of its technical superiority to existing methods, even regular people could see that difference. It's not because of incentives that it is so popular and most people never recieved them

rvz4• 3 years ago

So that governments can track, freeze and seize your funds at will or add savings limits to your account to get you to spend more and save less. [0] [1]

Once the government does something extremely unpopular, I will only see the same thing that happened with the trucker protesters with their bank accounts getting frozen which will happen in other countries for just protesting [2] and next time, CBDCs will play a significant role on who actually controls your money and they will do anything like banning the use of ATMs [3] to get you to use CBDCs.

[0] https://www.premiumtimesng.com/business/business-news/571691...

[1] https://reclaimthenet.org/digital-euro-spending-saving-limit...

[2] https://www.newsweek.com/banks-have-begun-freezing-accounts-...

[3] https://www.pymnts.com/cbdc/2022/nigeria-cuts-atm-cash-withd...

lucasfcosta• 3 years ago

As a note, this is slightly incorrect:

The Indian model is inspiring others. Brazil’s Pix, which facilitates bank-to-bank payments with a small fee, was launched in November 2020. It now accounts for some 30% of Brazil’s electronic payments (credit and debit cards take up around 20% each)

In fact, Pix is free, which is the main reason why the Brazilian population adopted it so widely and so quickly. Before Pix, you'd always have to pay a significant fee to make bank transfers, and they could end up taking a whole day to go through.

rozularen• 3 years ago

in Spain there's Bizum

Carioca• 3 years ago

Nitpick: Pix is free between people. Companies pay ~1% of the transaction

stefan_• 3 years ago

That is crazy high, cash back credit card levels

rippercushions• 3 years ago

Nope, on average 0.22%.

https://www.reuters.com/article/brazil-cenbank-pix-idUSL2N2V...

braindead_in• 3 years ago

Just one mention of India Stack and no mention of iSpirit/Sharad Sharma at all. They were the brains behind it all. I hope they do something with LLMs as well.

fnord77• 3 years ago

sounds like the exact opposite of crypto

alephnerd5• 3 years ago

Yep, and it's actually useful for unbanked people.

It's essentially a digitized version of Postal Saving Systems [0] that were traditionally common in Central and Eastern Europe.

Tbf, a lot of the thought leadership done to design UPI+IndiaStack was done by people with an actual background in Developmental Economics+Banking at JPAL (MIT+Harvard), FSI (Stanford), and BFI (UChicago).

A lot of Policy Advising in India+China+ASEAN is done by alumni of those 3 programs.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_savings_system

illegalmemory• 3 years ago

I simply love UPI! I have seen this firsthand in remote villages and it has completely changed how small merchants accept money. Recently, while I was in Goa and even out in the ocean off the coast, the ease with which I was able to make payments was out of this world.

HeavyFeather• 3 years ago

in remote villages
the ease with which I was able to make payments

I find it hard to believe that handing cash was "hard" in any way.

b345• 3 years ago

Getting cash is hard where there are no ATMs and you aren't offering any services

colesantiago3• 3 years ago

I'm so happy that payment rails services such as UPI, PIX and the like are getting more attention. This is a breath of fresh air compared to last years vile crypto fad.

I'm hoping FedNow in the US completely wipes crypto and the world will follow on from what India and Brazil has done. Bravo!

WinstonSmith843• 3 years ago

Mass surveillance, yay!

Fed ... what? Anyway, do not worry, your hopes will be fulfilled very soon in the US with the arrival of the digital dollar. More control and surveillance, how delighting!

cubefox6• 3 years ago

Less control, if anything. Remember how credit card companies blocked WikiLeaks and Pornhub?

ledgerdev• 3 years ago

Any possibility for some regional/local/state payment system in the US that's not a 3% tax on every purchase?

cubefox6• 3 years ago

Someone else posted this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedNow

FedNow is a service developed by the Federal Reserve for depository institutions in the United States. It will enable individuals and businesses to send and receive instant payments.[1][2][3][4] Banks will be able to build products on top of the FedNow platform.[5]
FedNow is scheduled to begin formal certification of participants of the program in April 2023, with a formal launch planned for July 2023.[6][7] It will operate on a 24-hour, 365-days-a-year basis,[8] as opposed to the U.S. government's current system that is closed on weekends and holidays.[9][10] FedNow's transaction costs are expected to be about one-fifth the cost of existing payment solutions, which cost merchants an average of $0.23 per transaction.[5][clarification needed]

nine_zeros• 3 years ago

UPI is the best! It is like Mastercard, stripe, bank transfers, Venmo and goolf ol cash combined, only that it is available as a free public utility.

If they only introduce a way to do chargebacks (or a fair dispute mechanism), the remaining few cash transactions will go away too.

cvjcvjcvj• 3 years ago

There are no fee at all using Brazil's pix.

ta77893• 3 years ago

People seem to have a general distrust about the Indian government and the UPI system. There are certainly a lot of conspiracy theories floating around.

The plain idea of UPI is that it is publicly funded digital infrastructure. The US has networks such as Mastercard, Visa, etc. These are privately run digital infrastructure that facilitate digital payments. UPI is publicly funded digital infrastructure. AFAIK it is legal for private digital infrastructure such as Visa, MC, etc to exist. However, due to the tax payer funded nature of UPI the fees are way lower than private digital infrastructure can offer. This has been the main criticism against it by the private players.

Let's be clear, governments everywhere build roads using taxes and offers them for "free" to the citizens. That doesn't stop private entities from creating private roads for a fee. However, no private entity tries to build road infrastructure as it is not a profitable business. Thats the same situation with digital payments in India due to UPI's existence. That doesn't mean that private businesses cannot offer their own private payment networks with value added services to compete with UPI.

The mindset in the west is very different than the east which leads to a whole lot of unfounded criticism on here.

padiyar83• 3 years ago

Thank you for bringing this clarity. And as an Indian citizen I am glad we took this step towards building an independent payments infrastructure, given how critical a payments clearance system is to the functioning of a modern economy.

I don't want other governments to hold us hostage through Visa's and Mastercard's where we are just one sanction away from economic meltdown. Just like what happened recently in Russia.

As a country we should be looking at securing other such critical support systems - Power control systems, Telecom hardware etc. That's the only way IMO to be truly independent!

ta77893• 3 years ago

Absolutely, the US government has a long tradition of weaponizing US Dollar and SWIFT to cut off countries from global trade. This is a fact that has been happening ever since the petrodollar was invented. Governments all over the world, especially India, have realized this is a big vulnerability and a threat to their country's sovereignty. India, Brazil and several countries across the world have invested in their own infrastructure as they rightly should to keep their economic independence.

For those who don't know India has been on the receiving end of US sanctions for a variety of reasons. While the reasoning behind the sanctions has been long debated, it is plainly obvious from the Indian vantage point that economic independence is very critical for their survival.

villgax3• 3 years ago

In case you are not aware, UPI is basically a rebranded IMPS with Venmo style of address. Until UPI actually works internationally it is still a domestic payment system.

SanjayMehta2• 3 years ago

The fact that it's public infrastructure and has no transaction fees is the source of much of the negative press.

Both Mastercard and Visa went complaining to the US govt about UPI and RuPay because they foresee their duopoly ending.

ta77893• 3 years ago

Correct. Public infrastructure can (but not usually is) run at a loss for the welfare of the citizens. That's the whole point of public infrastructure. MasterCard and Visa have been complaining for a _long_ time about this issue as it undercuts their profitability.

WeylandYutani2• 3 years ago

Yep Americans will tell you it is normal for a company to take 1-2% of every transaction. Don't believe their lies.

sifar3• 3 years ago

> The plain idea of UPI is that it is publicly funded digital infrastructure

UPI is developed by NPCI which is a consortium of Indian banks (public and private), supported by RBI[0]. It is a not-for profit, but not publicly funded.

The fees are lower right now since they want to proliferate the use and get a monopoly over Visa/Mastercard. Once done, expect them to be at par. They just added some fees this march [1].

The distrust is not conspiracy theories but common sense when you observe how other entities have behaved previously.

[0] www.npci.org.in [1] https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blexplainer/interchange...

theWreckluse• 3 years ago

Can you please provide references/sources for the last statement.

alephnerd5• 3 years ago

It is a not-for profit, but not publicly funded.

That's a bit disingenuous.

51-55% of NPCI's ownership is the RBI and PSU Banks (operated by Ministry of Finance) [0], so in reality it's a public private partnership between the Ministry of Finance and Private Sector banks.

A good comparison to the NPCI would probably be the Federal Reserve system in the US, but NPCI is a bit more autarkic.

[0] https://www.npci.org.in/PDF/npci/corporate-governance/shareh...

WeylandYutani2• 3 years ago

Visa/MasterCard is an extension of the American government.

I distrust them more than my local government.

SanjayMehta2• 3 years ago

The comments in this thread lack some context. Prior to UPI, the government ensured that anyone with a mobile phone, even just a feature phone, could open a bank account.

This enabled direct transfer of subsidies to eligible citizens.

An earlier PM Rajiv Gandhi had admitted that only 15% of benefits actually reached the intended recipients, the rest being consumed in overheads and corruption.

UPI ensures that even people in remote locations can make payments without having to walk long distances to withdraw theirbcash from a bank. Villages don't have ATMs.

It's more like a debit card than anything else, but you use a phone instead of a card.

As for tracking fears, all debit/credit card transactions are logged so UPI is no different. If you want to use cash, you can do so, but you'd be surprised how many vendors prefer UPI as they don't have to worry about change.

ft-kenya-claims• 3 years ago

The article repeats a claim discussed by https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03056244.2019.16... "that ‘access to the Kenyan mobile money system M-PESA increased per capita consumption levels and lifted 194,000 households, or 2% of Kenyan households, out of poverty’ (Suri and Jack 2016, 1288). It is no exaggeration to say that this article and its specific poverty reduction claim have electrified the international development community."

"If Suri and Jack’s claims are broadly verifiable, then here we have one of the most important anti-poverty interventions of recent history. Anyone concerned with addressing global poverty, including the current authors, should be very happy indeed. However, extreme caution is warranted. This is because the recent history of the international development community is, unfortunately, littered with claims of miraculous poverty-reducing policy interventions, a great many of which are then shown at a later date to be quite ineffective"

The authors critique the M-PESA claims on six grounds:

* Impact of exit not discussed: "while it is relatively easy to provide financial and other stimuli to encourage certain groups to move into petty entrepreneurship, if there is no commensurate increase in local demand at the same time then the zero-sum end result is simply the redistribution of local demand among a larger number of market participants"

* Impact of displacement ignored: "There is [...] no attempt to compare the outcomes of those households managing to establish or expand a tiny retail business with the help of M-Pesa, and those households in the same community that have no engagement with M-Pesa but are already in possession of, and therefore survive because of, a tiny retail business."

* Rising over-indebtedness in Kenya: "they choose to measure specific household increases in incomes and savings attributable to M-Pesa, but fail to calculate the impact of the wider (but gradual) increases in debt also attributable to M-Pesa. Over-indebtedness has been rising to dangerous levels in almost all parts of the global South where access to microcredit has been facilitated by the international development community"

* Accumulation by dispossession: "as of 2018, the ownership of M-Pesa resides with the Kenya-registered company, Safaricom. [... which] is today 40% owned by the UK multinational Vodafone plc [...] [Safaricom] alone accounts for a massive 40% of the total stock market valuation on the Nairobi securities exchange"

* Wealthy versus poor networks: "the increase in consumption they observe could simply result from wealth being passed along fin-tech-enabled linkages to others in the same family or social circle or class."

* Flawed impact evaluation methodology: "M-Pesa agents, just as with other financial units seeking profit elsewhere in Africa, are well known for proliferating in wealthier urban areas where there are more opportunities to obtain large client numbers and wealthier clients, the combination of which is more likely to generate higher financial returns"

The authors conclude: "There is little doubt that fin-tech has the potential to liberate enormous value. The digital finance sector has been expanding at a mind-boggling rate from China to Southeast Asia, from Africa to Latin America. But the core problem as it stands – as illustrated in Kenya and other places around the world – is that the bulk of this value does not go to the poor. Rather, fin-tech is very clearly designed to hoover up value and deposit it into the hands of a narrow global digital-financial elite that are the main forces behind the fin-tech revolution. Of course, this enormous wealth could be redirected towards Kenya’s poor population and reinvested locally, for example through community-owned financial institutions and financial cooperatives, but there would appear to be little time, sympathy, or political support for building such pro-poor institutions when so much wealth can be appropriated by so few so quickly in another way."

alephnerd5• 3 years ago

An anecdote I posted above specifically about the positive impact digital payments has had on poverty eradication:

In my ancestral village, before cashless payments the nearest bank was 5 miles away in the district/county headquarters. If you needed to take out cash or deposit a paycheck, you'd need to ride a bike or take a bus or walk over potholed roads to get to that bank which was staffed with lazy employees who'd take chai+nashta breaks all the time. With the proliferation of cashless payment options, it's much easier now to deposit a paycheck or buy groceries in these small towns and villages.

kylehotchkiss3• 3 years ago

I wish there were better ways to use UPI as a tourist. Like if wise.com could support QR code payments to it. Right now the system isn’t very accessible to those on short term visits.

ffpip2• 3 years ago

https://travel.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/technology/...

(Foreign tourists & travellers in India can now make payments using UPI)

kylehotchkiss3• 3 years ago

Interesting! It took me a lot of googling after reading to figure this out…

The international airports have Thomas Cook booths for exchanging cash to rupees. They now allow foreigners to create an account on this app called “fave” which they can reload only at the airport. This is limited only to g20 countries (that’s an odd requirement considering many wealthy countries aren’t in g20).

It’s a start but still way too complicated to figure out after 10 hour flight and stressful airport entry.

I hope they improve by integrating recharge by PayPal or another internationally useful service.

devnull3• 3 years ago

As a big fan of UPI, I have a concern if people became too much dependent on it. What happens when there is a power outage for extended period of time (due to war, natural calamity, grid failure, etc)?

Most shops in India do not have backup power provisioned.

chupchap• 3 years ago

In such a scenario only cash works.

abhayhegde• 3 years ago

You're talking about all hell breaks loose kind of situations and anything basic would be a concern then, let alone UPI not working. There's no universal solutions for such situations. That doesn't mean the country shouldn't be too dependent on UPI.

villgax3• 3 years ago

UPI is just a simpler IMPS(which used mobile number) with email address like handle which again is either mobile@bank or email/name@bank just like Venmo. Nothing revolutionary at all. There is no customer care that you can call & have your problems addressed, you still need to go to your bank for any issues or refunds coz for some reason Indians are not exactly entrusted with being able to raise chargebacks

himujjal• 3 years ago

Weird there are even negative comments about UPI. That too from people who haven't lived in pre-UPI era.

My father and my uncle both have had history of losing cash to robbery earlier in the past in broad daylight. Snatch and run. Huge amounts of cash. My wallet has not seen any paper-based cash in over 1-2 years now and I live in a Tier-4 town/city.

The habit of not giving the extra 1-2 rupees of extra change has gone. Now, its the exact amount. Plus no one these days have to loan out payments. You can directly pay the amount quick.

The scale and the way UPI has become such an integral part of Indian lives is such so much valuable that the minor inconveniences (Privacy & customer care) are ignorable.

creaper• 3 years ago

The habit of not giving the extra 1-2 rupees of extra change has gone.

Yea, but I bet you are buying a lot of extra things that you don't really need, because it is easy to pay, and you will never run out of cash, because you are always drawing from some treasury that is always online. Earlier, with cash, you go to a bank and get some funds for monthly expenses, and you should be wary of running it out soon, because you ll have to go to the bank again. For bigger expenses, you used a cheque.

Now you don't have to think twice before ordering a takeaway that costs 500 bucks.

Make all exploitation more efficient. That is the purpose of technology in modern human existence. Technologies that does that, will go mainstream, others fizzle out.

runeks• 3 years ago

Consumers prefer safer payment methods for big-ticket items. “I use upi to buy chai. But I wouldn’t use it for a plane ticket,” says one architect based in Mumbai.
There are other flaws with upi.

This doesn't sound like a flaw at all to me, but a feature.

Why on earth would I want to pay a 2% fee for "consumer protection" when I go to a physical store to buy a can of coke?

The reason I do this is only because I have no alternative.

Also, there's nothing preventing building an escrow service on top of UPI, as far as I know. This would be useful for online purchases where the seller isn't entirely trustworthy.

kylehotchkiss3• 3 years ago

Maybe this is just plane tickets specifically, the government spent like a year and a half yelling at the airlines to refund people in cash and not lousy credits after all the Covid flight cancellations. That was an issue chargebacks would have been very helpful in reducing

hestefisk2• 3 years ago

This is also happening in countries like Thailand and Indonesia with PromptPay and QRIS respectively. Walk past most street stall it’s either cash or QR, no cards.

A digital payments revolution in India

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