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A digital payments revolution in India

economist.com

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Re: A digital payments revolution in India

#141

Post by pyuser583 »

ta_vf7xjd34cc wrote: post #125
realityking wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For those who don't know India has been on the receiving end of US sanctions for a variety of reasons. According to wikipedia[0] there‘s only ever been two sanctions against India by the US. A short lived one from 98-99 because of a nuclear ban and a much longer one from 92-2011 related to the space program/missile development. A quick search didn‘t turn up any current US sanctions either. Were there more sanctions…

> A quick search didn‘t turn up any current US sanctions either. The US and Indian governments have had bad relations for a long time. The US has the habit of weaponizing anything and everything. While not exactly sanctions, people don't forget things like PL480[1] that easily: > Many of us still have hurtful memories of the mid-'60s when, after two successive years of savage drought, India desperately needed America…

Interesting. There are a lot of stories from the 1960s about us giving/trading food to India.

The US had a massive surplus, and was trying very hard not to destroy excess food.

They sent food to India, because the alternative was to let it go bad. And they would thank India for taking it.

But when diplomats realized this was happening, they tried to use it to extract concessions from India.

So India was being told “please take this food,” then “now that you’ve taken the food you owe us.”

India wasn’t exactly pure in this either.

India has been thankfully free of widespread famine since the British left. But internal controls created shortages, which were unnecessary.

India could have fed itself, but that was politically untenable, just as it was politically untenable for the US government to destroy food or stop paying farmers to overproduce.

Re: A digital payments revolution in India

#142

Post by pyuser583 »

ta7789 wrote: post #106
SanjayMehta wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

If they could, Mastercard and Visa would outlaw all currency except pennies.

Re: A digital payments revolution in India

#143

Post by rvz »

cuteboy19 wrote: post #139
rvz wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bu itself upi has been a revolution. We need not think of farfetched conspiracies Again. You are missing the forest for the trees. I already substantiated the fact that a central bank has already banned the use of ATMs for the purpose of its users to be forced to adopt their CBDC. That is a fact, not a conspiracy, and there is no reason why this cannot happen in other countries that have finalized and are already d…

The problem is that the Indian government has already essentially full control. Americans enjoy more freedoms so maybe the conspiracies are justified. But the Indian government already has near total control in the financial sense. From an Indian perspective this is just pure convenience, since the control aspect is present regardless

> But the Indian government already has near total control in the financial sense. From an Indian perspective this is just pure convenience, since the control aspect is present regardless

That doesn't mean it cannot happen elsewhere (as I have already shown) which is my entire point.

Celebrating mass surveillance and total control of new digital currencies in the form of a CBDC and throwing free money into people bank accounts to pursue wider adoption, should scare us all and not celebrated, especially in the US, UK and other countries.

There will a point where governments will do worse things to discourage protests or donating to protest groups by using CBDCs against their own people even when they do something very unpopular.

Why on earth in the US should protestors be financially suffocated for simply protesting against their government if they did the same thing that happened in Canada with the truckers or in Nigeria with banning ATMs?

Re: A digital payments revolution in India

#144

Post by sifar »

theWreckluse wrote: post #127
sifar wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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].…

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

Err ... more recent, not Indian but :) ... OpenAI. Basically almost any startup that was trying to acquire market share with VC money. Couple it with the Indian government's penchant for digital surveillance and you ignore it at your own peril.

To clarify, I am not saying UPI is not useful - it is to millions of people, but it is also not benign that it is made out to be.

Re: A digital payments revolution in India

#145

Post by abhayhegde »

devnull3 wrote: post #119

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.

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.

Re: A digital payments revolution in India

#146

Post by sifar »

rippercushions wrote: post #123
elijaht wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many hours a week was the average person spending driving to get cash?

During the rupee demonetization a few years back, getting cash required queueing up for hours. About the only silver lining of that whole debacle was the boost it gave to digital payments, because cash was so broken.

One could argue it was the other way round. It was done to break cash (since it cannot be tracked) and boost digital payments.

Re: A digital payments revolution in India

#147

Post by screye »

photochemsyn wrote: post #8

[flagged]

I hate how India delivers competent public services. It is oppressive & authoritarian.

The oppressive Indian Railways make it difficult to move around in the nation, while the amazing private network of high speed trains in the US is lightyears ahead.

I love the complex tax code of USA. An incompetent govt like India's would never be able to produce software as pleasing to use as Turbotax.

Allowing private companies to monopolize public contracts is great for the health of the nation. Pizza for school lunches is why Americans dominate sports around the world.

India should take inspiration from the free nation of USA. No surveillance here. What is a Snow den ?

Re: A digital payments revolution in India

#148

Post by sifar »

alephnerd wrote: post #128
sifar wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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].…

> 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…

I mean technically yes, but the reason I feel it is nothing to cheer about is if you understand how these public funded corporations work in India. They are mostly the worst of both worlds - you get a monopoly with lousy service.

For e.g the case of IRCTC which is the commercial arm of Indian railways and look at the insane price gouging that has been happening.

In the end, people end up over paying for sub-par products/services.

Re: A digital payments revolution in India

#149

Post by villgax »

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

Re: A digital payments revolution in India

#150

Post by villgax »

padiyar83 wrote: post #90
ta7789 wrote: post #84

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…

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 Russi…

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.
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