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Why peer to peer digital payment system UPI should remain free in India

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Re: Why peer to peer digital payment system UPI should remain free in India

#11

Post by bergenty »

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #2

absolutely. i am a professional who deals with businesses and i have seen how UPI has immensely helped reduce dependency on cash... i use it everyday. right now UPI is mandated to be mobile phone based, it has to keep the registered SIM card at all times, you cannot change your phone, cannot have a single account on muliple places, you dont have account portability but those are all technical issues. Because of an ac…

What happens if you lose your phone? There must be some way to transfer the account right?

Re: Why peer to peer digital payment system UPI should remain free in India

#12

Post by 2Gkashmiri »

bergenty wrote: post #11
2Gkashmiri wrote: post #2

absolutely. i am a professional who deals with businesses and i have seen how UPI has immensely helped reduce dependency on cash... i use it everyday. right now UPI is mandated to be mobile phone based, it has to keep the registered SIM card at all times, you cannot change your phone, cannot have a single account on muliple places, you dont have account portability but those are all technical issues. Because of an ac…

What happens if you lose your phone? There must be some way to transfer the account right?

nah, its not like that.

your "upi address", like "abc@sbi" is tied to that phone/sim card/bank.

if you change your phone or use a different app, that "handle" is reserved and not portable.

if you change your phone or lost it, just get a duplicate sim card, install a UPI app and get a new address.

Re: Why peer to peer digital payment system UPI should remain free in India

#13

Post by deepakshenoy »

signal11 wrote: post #5
deepakshenoy wrote: post #4

Thanks very much! I would love to hear your comments. I think UPI is incredible and well loved because it's free - putting a toll on something moving at this insane speed is just going to slow it down tremendously.

Hey Deepak, I saw your comments about this on Twitter, and it’s good to see this article as well. Personally I don’t think UPI will ever go to a fully-paid model, but I’d love to know what you think about the potential for a “freemium” model, eg with payment protection or improved anti fraud built in. My sense is that combating fraud/abuse costs money and currently UPI essentially relies on the customer not making mi…

A freemium service can already be built with a payment escrow for anti fraud protection, for willing merchants and customers. Fighting fraud is useful for banks to invest regardless of whether it's UPI or not, I'm not sure if you need separate models for UPI. Request abuse is pretty easy to track i imagine, for any bank or even for npci...and npci has a big profit pool.

Indeed internet shutdowns are a problem but i think the state will have to move out of shutdowns as UPI gets popular. You are right, that is a pain.

Re: Why peer to peer digital payment system UPI should remain free in India

#14

Post by wtmt »

bergenty wrote: post #11
2Gkashmiri wrote: post #2

absolutely. i am a professional who deals with businesses and i have seen how UPI has immensely helped reduce dependency on cash... i use it everyday. right now UPI is mandated to be mobile phone based, it has to keep the registered SIM card at all times, you cannot change your phone, cannot have a single account on muliple places, you dont have account portability but those are all technical issues. Because of an ac…

What happens if you lose your phone? There must be some way to transfer the account right?

UPI is not a money holding account by itself. It’s an identifier for your bank account. You can have multiple identifiers for the same bank account (like email aliases pointing to one mailbox).

UPI is primarily available on smartphones through an app. The setup process involves the UPI app (could be bank’s app or a third party app like Google Pay) sending an SMS with a specific code to NPCI (the private consortium operating the UPI service).

If you lose your device or uninstall the app or the UPI account is deactivated due to inactivity, you just fire up the app and get it to send the SMS again for authorization.

Re: Why peer to peer digital payment system UPI should remain free in India

#15

Post by wtmt »

mandis wrote: post #6

Is UPI one of the rare times when a government organization has created an innovative technology that works for a scale of 100 Million+ users?

NPCI, the organization operating UPI, is owned by public and private banks. It is approved by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and is marketed by the government. About two years ago, RBI had concerns about NPCI having a monopoly and wanted more players to create and interoperate similar services, but it canceled that plan (reasons unknown).

Re: Why peer to peer digital payment system UPI should remain free in India

#17

Post by ignoramous »

sudhirj wrote: post #16

A lakh is 100,000 and a crore is 10 million, or 10,000,000. In India, the next order of magnitude after 10,000 is one lakh (hundred thousand) and a crore is a hundred lakhs (100 x 100,000 or 10M).

The context is UPI ... has reached volumes of 10 lakh crore rupees per month

1,000,000 * 10,000,000 => 1E13/mo rupees => $125,000,000,000/mo

Google, Facebook, Amazon, Walmart are all shareholders in the parent company that runs UPI along with some 19 other Indian banks.

Re: Why peer to peer digital payment system UPI should remain free in India

#18

Post by spaceman_2020 »

deepakshenoy wrote: post #4

Thanks very much! I would love to hear your comments. I think UPI is incredible and well loved because it's free - putting a toll on something moving at this insane speed is just going to slow it down tremendously.

I don't see why we can't move to tiered pricing. X number of transactions are free. Transactions above that count attract a small fee.

Re: Why peer to peer digital payment system UPI should remain free in India

#19

Post by spaceman_2020 »

UPI is amazing. And its quickly spreading everywhere.

I was on a week long vacation in Goa and literally did not have to use cash even once. Right from local stores to restaurants to kayak rentals, everyone accepts UPI.

Not a single transaction failed. Not a single transaction lagged.

Re: Why peer to peer digital payment system UPI should remain free in India

#20

Post by MichaelZuo »

Cmd+F to find ‘liability’ and the word only appears once in the very bottom disclaimer explaining that the author does not accept ‘liability’ for anything written.

I guess the topic of who has liability for this financial system, and the cost of that liability, is too unimportant to be worth mentioning?

e.g. In case of a breach of personal information, transaction records, etc., who would be held responsible?

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