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Tiny, cheap smart speakers unlocked the rise of digital payments in India

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Re: Tiny, cheap smart speakers unlocked the rise of digital payments in India

#11

Post by db1234 »

alsodumb wrote: post #5
flerchin wrote: post #2

Literacy rates in India look to be ~80% and climbing about 1% per year. Obviously it'll reach an asymptote, but it's looking like India already surpasses the US in this regard. Of course, given the large population, more Indians are illiterate than there are people in almost every nation. Nonetheless, wouldn't this solution be quite niche? Source: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/IND/india/literacy-rat...

I've interacted with several vendors who use these sound boxes. The article is a bit misleading in the sense that illiteracy is not the primary driver of the usage of these devices. It is a better check-out experience. Vendors were busy and annoyed by the fact that they have to use their phone to confirm payments which often hindered them from doing their routine to sell more stuff. Think about vendors making street…

+1. First time I came across these speakers was when I had tea in a road side tea stall off an highway. The shop was crowded and I held my phone at the owner to show him the evidence of payment which he ignored and within a couple of seconds my payment was announced on the speaker. Great experience!

Re: Tiny, cheap smart speakers unlocked the rise of digital payments in India

#13

Post by eru »

t8sr wrote: post #7
flerchin wrote: post #2

Literacy rates in India look to be ~80% and climbing about 1% per year. Obviously it'll reach an asymptote, but it's looking like India already surpasses the US in this regard. Of course, given the large population, more Indians are illiterate than there are people in almost every nation. Nonetheless, wouldn't this solution be quite niche? Source: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/IND/india/literacy-rat...

I thought you were joking about India surpassing the US in literacy rates, and then I looked it up. It's 75 - 85% depending on how you count. What?! How is this number not 99.9%? Developed countries are at 100% or minus rounding error. Even Canada is at 99%, and that's next door. What is going on in the US?

I would suggest you double check what definition of literacy the different countries are using. Perhaps the US has a more stringent definition?

As an example, for a long time Germany used a way to measure unemployment that yielded consistently higher numbers than most of the rest of the world. So any honest international comparison had to make adjustments.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States

> In many nations, the ability to read a simple sentence suffices as literacy, and was the previous standard for the U.S. The definition of literacy has changed greatly; the term is presently defined as the ability to use printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one's goals, and to develop one's knowledge and potential.[3]

Re: Tiny, cheap smart speakers unlocked the rise of digital payments in India

#14

Post by sriram_malhar »

t8sr wrote: post #7
flerchin wrote: post #2

Literacy rates in India look to be ~80% and climbing about 1% per year. Obviously it'll reach an asymptote, but it's looking like India already surpasses the US in this regard. Of course, given the large population, more Indians are illiterate than there are people in almost every nation. Nonetheless, wouldn't this solution be quite niche? Source: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/IND/india/literacy-rat...

I thought you were joking about India surpassing the US in literacy rates, and then I looked it up. It's 75 - 85% depending on how you count. What?! How is this number not 99.9%? Developed countries are at 100% or minus rounding error. Even Canada is at 99%, and that's next door. What is going on in the US?

It is not a fair comparison. In India, the definition of "literacy" does not mean functional literacy in India ... merely knowledge of the alphabet is enough to qualify ("akshar gyan").

Re: Tiny, cheap smart speakers unlocked the rise of digital payments in India

#15

Post by JumpCrisscross »

flerchin wrote: post #2

Literacy rates in India look to be ~80% and climbing about 1% per year. Obviously it'll reach an asymptote, but it's looking like India already surpasses the US in this regard. Of course, given the large population, more Indians are illiterate than there are people in almost every nation. Nonetheless, wouldn't this solution be quite niche? Source: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/IND/india/literacy-rat...

> it's looking like India already surpasses the US in this regard

Different standards. India is measuring base literacy, being able to "read and write with understanding a short simple statement about their everyday life" [1]. The comparable counter-statistic in the U.S. is Level 1 illiteracy, or being able to "unable to successfully determine the meaning of sentences, read relatively short texts to locate a single piece of information, or complete simple forms" in English [2]. That figure is 4.1%. (A Spanish-speaking physics PhD would count.)

[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/IND/india/literacy-rat...

[2] https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179.pdf

Re: Tiny, cheap smart speakers unlocked the rise of digital payments in India

#16

Post by villgax »

rkrishnaan wrote: post #6

Another thing that helps this boom is, in India no one has any problem in sharing their phone number with strangers. Delivery workers, Cab drivers, Restaurant waitlist, you name it. So payment send and receive with just mobile number as the primary key becomes easier.

Wow not true at all, everybody hesitates to bring forced to give mobile number at the supermarket it cloth stores for no good reason than to feed into FB/Google in bulk.

For paying a bill you're just scanning the QR most of the time, it's only P2P like cabs/autos when you may have to scan the drivers personal QR. Gpay & others apart from BHIM tend to already generate or allow alphanumeric UPI ID.

Re: Tiny, cheap smart speakers unlocked the rise of digital payments in India

#17

Post by eru »

rkrishnaan wrote: post #6

Another thing that helps this boom is, in India no one has any problem in sharing their phone number with strangers. Delivery workers, Cab drivers, Restaurant waitlist, you name it. So payment send and receive with just mobile number as the primary key becomes easier.

That seems to be working in Singapore as well.

Re: Tiny, cheap smart speakers unlocked the rise of digital payments in India

#18

Post by lotsofpulp »

villgax wrote: post #12

They do charge a subscription fee for it, but sadly enough this could have been done with any speaker they had & using the official app as well

But could it have been done with the resilience/volume/sound quality/redundancy/etc of the speaker?

A situation that comes to mind is a vendor stepping away to go to the bathroom, and asking their neighboring vendor to sell while they are gone. A cheap enough, but fail proof and versatile solution is not necessarily a waste.

Re: Tiny, cheap smart speakers unlocked the rise of digital payments in India

#19

Post by nativespecies »

t8sr wrote: post #7
flerchin wrote: post #2

Literacy rates in India look to be ~80% and climbing about 1% per year. Obviously it'll reach an asymptote, but it's looking like India already surpasses the US in this regard. Of course, given the large population, more Indians are illiterate than there are people in almost every nation. Nonetheless, wouldn't this solution be quite niche? Source: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/IND/india/literacy-rat...

I thought you were joking about India surpassing the US in literacy rates, and then I looked it up. It's 75 - 85% depending on how you count. What?! How is this number not 99.9%? Developed countries are at 100% or minus rounding error. Even Canada is at 99%, and that's next door. What is going on in the US?

Public education has been gutted for decades in this country.

Re: Tiny, cheap smart speakers unlocked the rise of digital payments in India

#20

Post by ck2 »

Is it a crazy suggestion that you could put a display on the smart speaker and teach a small subset of literacy for them to see what is being said?

Could someone learn a small amount that way?

I've seen countless stories of people who come to the US and learn some english by watching TV with the close captions turned on, has to work elsewhere?

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