So? Read the article, and? Some pretty basic payment flows.. Nothing about settlements, payment card messaging flow (you see a simplified logic in the article), nothing about other payment rails.. Come on.
UPI: Anatomy of a Payment Transaction
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Re: UPI: Anatomy of a Payment Transaction
#72UPI is fantastic software and the pride of great software engineering from India. Excellent engineering. I only wish more countries would implement something like UPI in other countries and get rid of inferior and broken solutions like crypto.
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Re: UPI: Anatomy of a Payment Transaction
#73So? Read the article, and? Some pretty basic payment flows.. Nothing about settlements, payment card messaging flow (you see a simplified logic in the article), nothing about other payment rails.. Come on.
Maybe you just don't know what you're looking at? UPI is an inter-bank system, why on earth would you expect an article on it to contain a payment card messaging flow discussion?
Re: UPI: Anatomy of a Payment Transaction
#74I can sense Claude behind all interactive graphics here, yet it apparently does great job to further make the point and interestingly TimesOfIndia is a major media outlet.
Re: UPI: Anatomy of a Payment Transaction
#75Question to op - Do QR based systems in other SEA countries like promptpay in Thailand also work on similar logic? Also, great website and layout, very respectful of the reader. Clean and with zero distractions.
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Re: UPI: Anatomy of a Payment Transaction
#76Yes, UPI works. But it's a terrible system for privacy and autonomy. It has so many intermediaries, requires phone number and linked to person's identity. It should not be called a peer-to-peer payment system in anyway. It is controlled by the government rather than Visa or Mastercard. That's the only the difference.
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Re: UPI: Anatomy of a Payment Transaction
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fair enough. I am not knowledgeable enough to debate if it’s a net negative or positive. But “savings and efficiency” also has a negative side where people have lost life savings and bank accounts emptied in a matter of minutes. UPI doesn’t help much with tax evasion. The biggest vehicle of tax evasion is property and cash is still the king there. UPI has been a good quality of life improvement for everyone. However…
All payment rails in India are RBI regulated directly or indirectly. NPCI is a non-profit section 8 company which is basically owned by the major PSU and private banks of India. And NPCI operates not just UPI, it also operates NEFT, IMPS, AEPS (aadhaar based payments), NETC (fastag), NFS (ATM network), Rupay debit/credit card network and BBPS (billpay). Only RTGS is operated by RBI directly. Money serves its purpose…
Thanks for the additional info. But I want to clarify one thing - I didn’t say anything about cash being a better choice. Both the comments to my response are making it out to be a cash vs digital thing. I am not sure why.
Next, NPCI is a PSU. So what? They are taking govt money to function aren’t they? The costs are borne by the banks which get allocations every budget to keep the system running. So whatever “profit” this PSU is making is literally just the government’s money paid through banks as transaction costs.
It helps with GST surveillance? Okay great. What about suitcases of cash that get passed around during land and property transactions?
2FA, velocity checks…etc., are things that came after the fact. For years no-one took responsibility for lost money. There was no redressal mechanism. ~Even today, does NCPI offers nothing as a redressal mechanism for scam transactions, it leaves it to the banks and individuals to sort it out. Which probably involves police complaints and follow up.~
Edit: I learnt that a redressal mechanism was finally introduced in 2025. So the above statement is invalid.
I genuinely have to ask, why is it hard to accept the shortcomings of the system and acknowledge the cost of running the system?
Re: UPI: Anatomy of a Payment Transaction
#78For those outside India and/or non-active users of UPI - it drives so many transactions that even for an engineer, I forget how often I use it: - Payments between family members - Payments for every tiny/small item - a bag a chips or a cup of tea for example - Payments for car mechanic, plumber, or other services - Payments for online shopping or services - yes web apps show the UPI QR code and I can pay from my phon…
Systems that are based on one-time codes instead of permanent credentials are really under-appreciated in the anglosphere.
Giving your credit card to your child / friend / spouse / subordinate, so that they can buy something with your money, is a lot more risky than giving them an OTP, valid for a single transaction, which you have to approve in your app anyway.
Poland's Blik is based on 6-digit codes, which makes this feature even more useful, as you can E.G. dictate that code over the phone to a trusted acquaintance at the ATM.
Re: UPI: Anatomy of a Payment Transaction
#79I can sense Claude behind all interactive graphics here, yet it apparently does great job to further make the point and interestingly TimesOfIndia is a major media outlet.
it's nowhere related to TimesOfIndia. It's `Time Series of India`.
from their footer:
> Time Series of India is an open-source project charting India's public data. All data belongs to the publishing agencies; charts and text may be cited with attribution.
Re: UPI: Anatomy of a Payment Transaction
#80For those outside India and/or non-active users of UPI - it drives so many transactions that even for an engineer, I forget how often I use it: - Payments between family members - Payments for every tiny/small item - a bag a chips or a cup of tea for example - Payments for car mechanic, plumber, or other services - Payments for online shopping or services - yes web apps show the UPI QR code and I can pay from my phon…
After adding UPI as a payment option to my little microSaaS, I'm finally starting to see sales in India. Was like trying to extract hen's teeth to get an Indian to sign up before that.
Yes this. Anytime a SaaS supports UPI Autopay, I'm 10-100x more likely to subscribe.
For context: it's basically a recurring payment but you open the Autopay section in Google pay or whichever app and it shows you all your subscriptions right there (which is a major +), the transaction history, and cancellation happens in the UPI app itself I don't have to faff around in the SaaS and deal with potentially some dark patterns.