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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

#111

Post by glutee »

signal11 wrote: post #87
sfifs wrote: post #3

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…

> In my latest trip, I don't believe I paid cash in any shop and I was in a second tier city the whole time, not one of the big metropolitan cities. If you’re a tourist or business visitor, this isn’t possible. UPI isn’t available to you. Also note that many smaller shops which accept cards and do accept India-issued MasterCard/Visa/Rupay won’t take MC/Visa issued abroad, because their payment providers charge them e…

Totally. UPI has made things awesome for the residents but far far worse for the visitors.

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

#112

Post by mymythisisthis »

SaltyGoodness wrote: post #24
t8sr wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 was stunned to learn that the average American reads at a 5th grade level. It's true though. I've been wondering why for a while, since it explains so much... Here's my best guess: 13 million children face daily hunger, and politicians fight to take away school lunches. Hungry kids don't learn too good. Fear porn is blasted over every corporate media outlet constantly, to the point where it saturates culture. Peopl…

This stat probably includes older Americans in their 80s and 90s. Many immigrated in their teens, from small villages, in the early 1940s/50s. Let's say you left rural Italy in 1940, as an 11 year old. Started working in America at 16, in 1946. Many jobs in America at that time didn't require much literacy, for example working in a textile mill, or an assembly line.

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

#113

Post by merlinran »

sfifs wrote: post #3

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…

This role is played by the smart phones in China. The customers pay by scanning the printed QR code, and upon success, the WeChat or Alipay app on the vendor's phone reads out the amount loud.

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

#115

Post by Zanni »

asdted wrote: post #47
yashg wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Demonetization induced usage reduced once cash was back in circulation. It was COVID era fear of touching cash and compulsion of lockdowns that really made digital payments hit the stratosphere.

Pre COVID transcations per month stood at 1.5b and now at 8.5B. COVID might have convinced few people that's all. Demonetization's effect is not clear since UPI came out just a year before Demonetization took place. It took off because of young generation and costs nothing as simple as that. They forced businesses and other to embrace it. Fun fact, i have been using UPI ever since it came out and used to pay for coco…

Curious about your math that equates 7 billion transactions per month to a "few people." That's a relative increase of more than 400%. I think you could argue that we were already on that trajectory, but it sure looks (to me) like Covid accelerated things, which matches my anecdotal experience.

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

#116

Post by GuB-42 »

alsodumb wrote: post #36
achow wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes right. > The 48-year-old, who can neither read nor write, would need to call his son to confirm that the payment had been received. Looks like the author made up a narrative. These vendors definitely can read numbers, they manage loads of cash through the day. They do lightening fast calculation in their head - which would put a Math grad student to shame. They may not be able to read, write English (or other lan…

I wouldn't be so sure about the author making up the narrative, it very well could be real but it is definitely not the majority. I get what you are saying, but none of this would put "a Math grad student to shame". If you really think it does, you definitely have no clue what grad students do - sincerely, a grad student whose best friend is a math grad student.

I am pretty sure many math grad students are not that great at mental arithmetic, which is the topic here. We are obviously not talking about the kind of advanced maths grad students to.

It is an interesting topic. I remember seeing an article about teaching maths to shopkeepers kids in third world countries. By western standards, they are quasi-illiterate. They are however remarkably good at tasks like giving change. When asked about their reasoning, it involves exchanging bills and goods rather than abstract numbers, and IIRC, they do better than western schoolkids of the same age.

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

#118

Post by tamirzb »

signal11 wrote: post #87
sfifs wrote: post #3

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…

> In my latest trip, I don't believe I paid cash in any shop and I was in a second tier city the whole time, not one of the big metropolitan cities. If you’re a tourist or business visitor, this isn’t possible. UPI isn’t available to you. Also note that many smaller shops which accept cards and do accept India-issued MasterCard/Visa/Rupay won’t take MC/Visa issued abroad, because their payment providers charge them e…

I agree, India in general has pretty bad bureaucracy against tourists, it feels like the government doesn't care at all about attracting them.

But I recently saw that Wise supports transferring money to India via UPI (also more anecdotally - I am living in Singapore and saw that some local banks have this feature as well). I guess this won't be as comfortable as just scanning a QR, but couldn't this technically work for tourists?

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

#119

Post by dopidopHN »

spyder wrote: post #102
alsodumb wrote: post #5

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.

Would you live your smartphone out? And it would also eventually drain the battery/fall/get wet

I really think the form factor is great.

I guess you can’t choose tips so American can’t use it. But I find it a good example of less intrusive tech.

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

#120

Post by raihansaputra »

jjoonathan wrote: post #22

It's amazing how fintech can create actual value when they aren't all just fighting over who gets to salami slice a nation's commerce! > Digital payments have taken off in a big way in India in recent years due to the government’s unified payments interface (UPI)... But this boom hasn’t helped fintech companies in India as they do not make money from facilitating UPI transactions.

Same is happening in Indonesia. The central bank standardized a QR code format for ~all digital payments and people can do cross-platform payments. Makes stuff so much easier.
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