101–110 of 147 posts
I visited India a few times in the last 9 months after digital payments had taken off due to COVID and can attest that these have been game changers that have led shopkeeps to accept e-payments. More than anything to do with literacy, this basically allows Shopkeeper to keep doing what they are doing without fiddling with their phones etc to confirm they received money. The device just says the amount received out lo…
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…
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 p…
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?
Not mentioned in the article but I asked a shopkeeper why they use it. Answer is fraud. Earlier, customers would download a "fake" app, which miciked online gateway's UI. Customer would punch in money, and show to shopkeeper that "payment went through". Customer takes goods with them and leaves. Shopkeeper looses money. With this sound box, shopkeeper gives goods ONLY after the box makes sound. Now imagine if a elder…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure our Department of Education is effective, and I think some children actually are being left behind, despite the "no child left behind" effort.
Why even consider that another standard could be in use, like others have pointed out in the thread, when you have political priors to confirm? Stay classy HN!
I visited India a few times in the last 9 months after digital payments had taken off due to COVID and can attest that these have been game changers that have led shopkeeps to accept e-payments. More than anything to do with literacy, this basically allows Shopkeeper to keep doing what they are doing without fiddling with their phones etc to confirm they received money. The device just says the amount received out lo…
I sometimes go weeks without realizing that I have literally zero cash in my wallet. I was using UPI so much that my credit card usage had dropped to almost nothing. Literally had to force myself to use the credit card more to accumulate some rewards.
That's pretty much my experience in the US. I probably have the same cash in my wallet that I've had for 5 or more years ... if there's any in there .. duno.
The difference is that I have that experience because of credit cards.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Hmm... but the phones too have speakers, they could have just made their to app read it just like the speaker does it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. The merchant tells them the amount and there's a QR code on the box to scan. 2. Within seconds. When I paid while over there it was 2 - 5 seconds. It doesn't say who the money is from though. 3. The merchant has to check their phone or trust the screen on the customers phone. It works surprisingly well for 95% of use cases. Usually more than one person isn't checking out in parallel. It lets the merchant continue…
I would just assume that the vendor's payment app would just play a chime and maybe a readout of the amount received. Every payment app I've used has a notification with name and total when I get money. I'm pretty sure Android can already handle this anyway. Connect the phone to a speaker if you need it louder. Seems like a much cheaper solution than buying a speaker with a built-in modem that you have to pay a month…
A) definitely don’t want to leave a smartphone someplace easy to check
B) don’t want to take the time to unlock your smartphone to see the notification
C) do want something that can notify you without taking your attention away from three other customers
Not mentioned in the article but I asked a shopkeeper why they use it. Answer is fraud. Earlier, customers would download a "fake" app, which miciked online gateway's UI. Customer would punch in money, and show to shopkeeper that "payment went through". Customer takes goods with them and leaves. Shopkeeper looses money. With this sound box, shopkeeper gives goods ONLY after the box makes sound. Now imagine if a elder…
> Balwant Singh, 32, runs a grocery store in New Delhi with his mother. He bought a Paytm Soundbox in 2020 after realizing digital payment receipts could be doctored. “[Before sound boxes], people were using apps to create fake payment receipts. I got conned a few times,” he told Rest of World.
The soundbox does seem useful. What you mentioned is all in the article.
> Abbas Ali, a vegetable vendor in an upscale neighborhood in New Delhi, started accepting digital payments in 2021. But every time a customer paid online, the 48-year-old, who can neither read nor write, would need to call his son to confirm that the payment had been received.