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UPI Payments: 10B transactions a month done, next stop 100B

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Re: UPI Payments: 10B transactions a month done, next stop 100B

#21
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s … not correct. Modi’s demonetization was a huge forced driver of digital payment adoption. It’s what spurred most companies into kicking off their UPI efforts

Why was the PM advertising for a 3rd party wallet? The goal of demonetisation has never been clear. It was a thuglaq move and Indian right wing has retro fitted motivations to it.

> Why was the PM advertising for a 3rd party wallet?

He wasn't. This was PayTM making hay when the sun shone. And obviously glorifying the Dear Leader has its benefits.

Re: UPI Payments: 10B transactions a month done, next stop 100B

#22
post #3
post #2

The scale of UPI payments is unprecedented. Perhaps the best payment system in the world by far. My friends who come from US are always awe struck by the pervasiveness and easy of use of UPI payments. They want it so bad in the West!

Probably not everyone, I hate QR coded based payment systems but prefer Apple Pay, so the apps won’t have my camera access. Same applies when folks from China claiming Alipay or WeChat is the best payment system.

UPI isn't QR based it you can also use UPI ID, which is like email. For eg: example@provider

And most UPI are linked with phone number, so you can also pay via phone number if UPI is linked with it.

Re: UPI Payments: 10B transactions a month done, next stop 100B

#23
That's >50% of monthly global Visa transactions [1].

Monthly volume at ~$190 billion [2], as compared to ~$1 trillion monthly volume for Visa globally [3].

Pretty good, given that most banks have daily UPI limits of $1200, and much lower individual transaction limits.

[1] https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/technology/2023/07/...

[2] https://www.cnbctv18.com/technology/upi-monthly-transaction-...

[3] https://annualreport.visa.com/financials/default.aspx

Re: UPI Payments: 10B transactions a month done, next stop 100B

#24
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why was the PM advertising for a 3rd party wallet? The goal of demonetisation has never been clear. It was a thuglaq move and Indian right wing has retro fitted motivations to it.

> Why was the PM advertising for a 3rd party wallet? He wasn't. This was PayTM making hay when the sun shone. And obviously glorifying the Dear Leader has its benefits.

So I can use his pic to promote any private business I want? That brazenly and without permission?

Re: UPI Payments: 10B transactions a month done, next stop 100B

#25

Thailand has a similar system - you use your banking app to scan a QR code, either the code is generated and has the amount included or it's printed static paper and you write the amount yourself, then show the receipt to the merchant or they check the notification in their phone. Started in 2017, nowadays it's everywhere, I can go to local market and pay $0.5 products with it. My 12 year old daughter opened her own…

Quite convenient for tracking people's consumption choices and discriminating based on them. Hi there! We've noticed an increase of fast food purchases in the log of your account. Therefore your medical insurance premiums have risen by 200% to accomodate the change. For lessened prices, you might want to start consuming our Healthy Food(TM) lunch packs by EvilCorp, made out of bugs for the good of the environment :)

Why could this not also be done with currently used card systems?

Re: UPI Payments: 10B transactions a month done, next stop 100B

#26
post #15

Thailand has a similar system - you use your banking app to scan a QR code, either the code is generated and has the amount included or it's printed static paper and you write the amount yourself, then show the receipt to the merchant or they check the notification in their phone. Started in 2017, nowadays it's everywhere, I can go to local market and pay $0.5 products with it. My 12 year old daughter opened her own…

All countries of SEA have similar systems (even Laos and Cambodia). The one managed by Malaysia now can work in Thailand, Singapore and Indonesia too. I think in the next 3-4 years, these wallets will support inter-change across all ASEAN.

The interop with banking across SEA is pretty cool now, most countries have cross border payments with nothing more than a QR code. And this is down to the hawker stall level.

It's advancing a lot quicker than you'd expect given that many of the countries aren't really that good at coordinating with each other.

Re: UPI Payments: 10B transactions a month done, next stop 100B

#27

Many countries have a single dominant privately owned e-cash system. The only alternative to a future with centralized financial systems, where the individual's right to transact won't be at the total mercy of the whims of forces they don't control (e.g. a corporation which deems their credit risk as unacceptably high, a political zeitgeist that deems their unwillingness to get vaccinated as making them deserving fin…

> like the public blockchain

Since this thread is about an article celebrating UPI's 10B transactions/month: That means between 4133 (28 days/month) and 3733 (31 days/month) transactions per second on average.

Bitcoin is at 7 transactions per second.

The bitcoin blockchain takes ~500GB these days. At UPI's transaction volume, it'd take 250TB by now, replicated at various sites.

Whatever you think of blockchain, it has some serious work ahead.

Re: UPI Payments: 10B transactions a month done, next stop 100B

#28
All positives are accepted.

Concerns --

- Cronies of government have captured the technology stack making themselves key players that can control and monetize this space.

- Traceability of all petty transactions -- enabling building of super rich profile of individuals / orgs -- ripe with potential for misuse.

- Leaving a trail of your PII like name / UPI ID (which in some cases is your mobilenumber@upiprovider) / last few digits of bank account number etc with all random people you transact with -- like taking a rikshaw ride or buying potatoes in a street-side vegetable market. (99.9% of these are harmless -- but the small fraction can invite intrusion / enable harassment)

- Over enthusiastic adoption of digital payments to the exclusion of other options forcing people to use apps. And the newer payment mechanisms -- opening newer avenues for scamming the less savvy / elderly / vulnerable.

- Pushing this change to people rather than letting the benefits and convenience naturally lead to adoption -- after the flaws are slowly uncovered and fixed through early adoption by savvy people (see Demonetization of 2016)

- This blind worship of technology as a silver bullet that cannot be criticized (or you are labelled a foreign-sponsored detractor / anti-national / india-hater whatever) extends more broadly into adjacent areas like the Aadhaar national ID system, linking of it to all spheres of citizen services from birth to death including voting rights and banking.

Re: UPI Payments: 10B transactions a month done, next stop 100B

#29
post #27

Many countries have a single dominant privately owned e-cash system. The only alternative to a future with centralized financial systems, where the individual's right to transact won't be at the total mercy of the whims of forces they don't control (e.g. a corporation which deems their credit risk as unacceptably high, a political zeitgeist that deems their unwillingness to get vaccinated as making them deserving fin…

> like the public blockchain Since this thread is about an article celebrating UPI's 10B transactions/month: That means between 4133 (28 days/month) and 3733 (31 days/month) transactions per second on average. Bitcoin is at 7 transactions per second. The bitcoin blockchain takes ~500GB these days. At UPI's transaction volume, it'd take 250TB by now, replicated at various sites. Whatever you think of blockchain, it ha…

That's an excellent point, as scalability has been the critical handicap of public blockchains to date.

This article is nearly two years old, but provides a good overview of the latest techniques devised for achieving scalability in public blockchains:

https://polynya.medium.com/rollups-data-availability-layers-...

Since then, layer 2s (which are the principal execution layer of the modular blockchain stack the article above expounds upon) have seen exponential growth in adoption, and mounting innovations bringing them progressively closer to their theoretical potential of 100,000 transactions per second:

https://l2beat.com/scaling/activity

Re: UPI Payments: 10B transactions a month done, next stop 100B

#30

All positives are accepted. Concerns -- - Cronies of government have captured the technology stack making themselves key players that can control and monetize this space. - Traceability of all petty transactions -- enabling building of super rich profile of individuals / orgs -- ripe with potential for misuse. - Leaving a trail of your PII like name / UPI ID (which in some cases is your mobilenumber@upiprovider) / la…

> Traceability of all petty transactions -- enabling building of super rich profile of individuals / orgs -- ripe with potential for misuse.

How is that any different to what Visa and Mastercard can do? Speaking for myself, *every* purchase I make now, no matter how petty, is made with credit or debit-cards which go through their payment networks. The only exceptions are my house' landscaping (still uses paper cheques), buying weed (all my local dispensaries in WA are cash-only due to the federal bank embargo on the legal cannabis industry), or personal transfers over Zelle/PayPal/Venmo - so I'm sure Mr. Mastercard has compiled quite the dossier on me by now.

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