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Show HN: Cheq UPI – India's first UPI payments app for foreigners

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Re: Show HN: Cheq UPI – India's first UPI payments app for foreigners

#21

Post by sudshekhar »

martinald wrote: post #14

Very interesting given how much success UPI is having. Some feedback: Bad typo on homepage (should be sponsor not sponser - also why is this so prominent on your landing page, seems weird). Who is transcorp and how are you related to them? Western people are very unlikely to have heard of them (I had to Google), and are you part of them, powered by them, etc? It's confusing having two brands like that at the top of y…

> Bad typo on homepage (should be sponsor not sponser - also why is this so prominent on your landing page, seems weird).

Will get this fixed. Also improve the positioning of it.

The idea behind getting sponsors was to keep the customer charges as low as possible.

We're attracing a very premium customer base and I am confident merchants would like to place themselves before our audience.

> Who is transcorp and how are you related to them? Western people are very unlikely to have heard of them (I had to Google), and are you part of them, powered by them, etc? It's confusing having two brands like that at the top of your page.

Transcorp is our banking/licensing partner. We're currently using their services in India to manage customer funds and power our UPI connection.

I understand your feedback though. We'll work on presenting this better.

> The two "British" video testimonials don't have British accents. Are you sure they are actually British?

Hahah, Nice catch. I just rechecked. Andrew is British. Olivia is American. Leo is Russian. We'll update this.

> Btw, I think partnerships would be a good way to market yourself. There are a lot of prepaid travel cards in the west and I can imagine they'd be happy to look at promoting you.

That's a great idea. We'll definitely explore this route for growth.

Re: Show HN: Cheq UPI – India's first UPI payments app for foreigners

#22

Post by KomoD »

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #19
kylehotchkiss wrote: post #18

You guys need to try, try, try to figure this out without the passport verification. I've spent a lot of visits to India and having to hand my passport to some local shopkeeper feels like an invitation for identity theft. People who grew up in the USA have been told their whole lives to protect their documents and this is a pretty big leap of faith for little benefit over grabbing cash from the ATM. Edit: to be more…

FWIW, you have a competitor who could very well figure out a UPI payments piece shortly (they don't seem to support the QR codes piece yet) ( https://wise.com/in/blog/send-money-to-india-with-upi ) and they have built in passport verification without the shopkeeper & scanner part. It'd be good to start without the rigidity of that step.

Wise supports UPI? Great, way more trustworthy than this

Re: Show HN: Cheq UPI – India's first UPI payments app for foreigners

#23

Post by sudshekhar »

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #18

You guys need to try, try, try to figure this out without the passport verification. I've spent a lot of visits to India and having to hand my passport to some local shopkeeper feels like an invitation for identity theft. People who grew up in the USA have been told their whole lives to protect their documents and this is a pretty big leap of faith for little benefit over grabbing cash from the ATM. Edit: to be more…

We have to do the passport verification since we're providing you with a prepaid wallet, which can be used to store funds and make purchases in India.

Companies like Wise power Remittances i.e. you can send money to a person in India from USA using their facilities.

However, this cannot be used to make purchases from merchants. Nor are you guaranteed your money will be delivered within 2 minutes in case of cross-border remittance.

Because Cheq actually opens a new Indian wallet, we must do the passport verification. Regulations are pretty specific in this regard currently.

Rest assured though, when you try to open your Cheq wallet today, your details will only ever be seen by White collared staff on direct Payroll of Transcorp. The agent only takes a photo of your passport for our records (no paper copies of your details are stored).

We'll keep trying to improve the onboarding experience in the coming years for sure.

Re: Show HN: Cheq UPI – India's first UPI payments app for foreigners

#24

Post by kylehotchkiss »

KomoD wrote: post #22
kylehotchkiss wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, you have a competitor who could very well figure out a UPI payments piece shortly (they don't seem to support the QR codes piece yet) ( https://wise.com/in/blog/send-money-to-india-with-upi ) and they have built in passport verification without the shopkeeper & scanner part. It'd be good to start without the rigidity of that step.

Wise supports UPI? Great, way more trustworthy than this

Apple appears to be trying to talk about implementing some form of UPI too! https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/22/apple-looks-to-resume-talk...

Re: Show HN: Cheq UPI – India's first UPI payments app for foreigners

#25

Post by sudshekhar »

KomoD wrote: post #22
kylehotchkiss wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, you have a competitor who could very well figure out a UPI payments piece shortly (they don't seem to support the QR codes piece yet) ( https://wise.com/in/blog/send-money-to-india-with-upi ) and they have built in passport verification without the shopkeeper & scanner part. It'd be good to start without the rigidity of that step.

Wise supports UPI? Great, way more trustworthy than this

Wise UPI can only be used to send money to third parties.

You cannot use them to make everyday purchases. And there's no guarantee by when the recipient will receive money.

Re: Show HN: Cheq UPI – India's first UPI payments app for foreigners

#26

Post by wmf »

sudshekhar wrote: post #23
kylehotchkiss wrote: post #18

You guys need to try, try, try to figure this out without the passport verification. I've spent a lot of visits to India and having to hand my passport to some local shopkeeper feels like an invitation for identity theft. People who grew up in the USA have been told their whole lives to protect their documents and this is a pretty big leap of faith for little benefit over grabbing cash from the ATM. Edit: to be more…

We have to do the passport verification since we're providing you with a prepaid wallet, which can be used to store funds and make purchases in India. Companies like Wise power Remittances i.e. you can send money to a person in India from USA using their facilities. However, this cannot be used to make purchases from merchants. Nor are you guaranteed your money will be delivered within 2 minutes in case of cross-bord…

There are KYC APIs that can do identity verification for you.

Re: Show HN: Cheq UPI – India's first UPI payments app for foreigners

#27

Post by optimistprime »

Love the idea, but honestly it's too much friction to start using your product. Please consider in-app passport verification and wallet creation.

Also the website does not seem to be well thought out - 1. No mention of how to use UPI or Cheq. 2. Where to go to get verified? 3. I could not find an ios app. Is there one coming soon? 4. Too many typos as others too have noted. "UPI wallet let’s you pay " <-- lets 5. Lots of irrelevant content on the home page. 6. Confusing "get started" button that is actually an image.

Re: Show HN: Cheq UPI – India's first UPI payments app for foreigners

#28

Post by jitix »

sudshekhar wrote: post #9
rlpb wrote: post #5

This looks interesting, but there are some questions I still have after reading your website. Perhaps you could clarify, please? Your website says: > Verify yourself at any one of our partner branches across India How do I find out if there's a branch nearby without downloading your app and committing to an unknown amount of effort? I couldn't find a list of your branches anywhere, but it looks like it would be a sho…

Hey, answering the questions below 1) https://transcorpint.com/find-us => You can verify yourself at any of these centers across India. We'll improve the site to directly point customers to appropriate verification centers (thanks for pointing this out) 2) OCI holders are accepted as well. Only your passport and OCI card are required 3) Add funds facility is instantenous. And is available in the app once you've finis…

I went over the list and IMO the omission of any verification center at the airport creates a huge friction in your app's adoption.

Just looking at the locations, it's a 2-3hr cab ride in Mumbai/Kolkata between the airports and the transcorp centers during rush hours, and 1-2hr trip in Delhi. Also credit cards are widely accepted at most places except roadside stalls, etc.

This service would be beneficial to visitors and NRIs (like me) if cross-sold with SIM cards or in currency exchanges at airports, otherwise I fail to see a valid use case due to the sheer inconvenience of having to take such a long cab ride in traffic. Also a lot of international flights land at night so visitors would have to dedicate at least half of next day to go verify their identity.

Re: Show HN: Cheq UPI – India's first UPI payments app for foreigners

#29

Post by technological »

SSLy wrote: post #10
sudshekhar wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, answering the questions below 1) https://transcorpint.com/find-us => You can verify yourself at any of these centers across India. We'll improve the site to directly point customers to appropriate verification centers (thanks for pointing this out) 2) OCI holders are accepted as well. Only your passport and OCI card are required 3) Add funds facility is instantenous. And is available in the app once you've finis…

>We'll improve the site to directly point customers to appropriate verification centers (thanks for pointing this out) You probably would want to co-operate with the SIM vendor offices at airports, they already do same checks if you want mobile data in India so might as well do it for UPI.

Is there any plan of having verification centers or online verification services in US itself ?
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