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

I wanted even things like my bank name or UPI app itself to be private. So I discovered that we can creat a 9 digit UPI number/ID and use that. But doesn’t seem to help. Support for that seems to be non-existent. I have tried entering it places that ask for UPI id like online portals, but no. Only the @ format seems to be supported everywhere

I was recently in India a few weeks ago for a friend's wedding. I am not an Indian national/citizen/whatever and my experience related to anything tech and money was absolute awful (esp the obsession with OTPs)

* The problems start as soon as you land at the airport. I land at the Delhi airport, my friend has sent a driver to pick me up and gave me his contact info. I try to connect to Airport wifi and bam it's asking me for an Indian number to text an OTP to connect to the public WiFi. Why is having an indian number at the Delhi INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT an expectation? What do they expect foreign travelers to do? Ridiculous. Luckily I found someone and asked to use their phone to whatsapp the driver and figure out where he was.

* Foreign credit cards are hit and miss. I have 2 credit cards, I let my bank know I would be traveling and I still could not reliably use them, they worked maybe a fraction of the time. Apparently Indian government added some "security" requirements earlier this year to "prevent fraud" that ices out a large number of foreign cards at many payment tills. This essentially makes India a cash-only economy for foreign tourists.

* If you try to use your foreign cards while shopping, many places will ask to send an OTP to your (indian) number even for relatively small amount of money involved, and again as a foreigner you are out of luck.

* Since I can't use my cards reliably, I am now forced to carry around cash. Worse... the highest denomination available is 500 rupeees, which is equivalent to about $6. This means that if you are planning on doing any type of shopping as a foreigner you have to carry a fat wad of cash on your person the entire time. I intended to do some shopping, eating out and drinking which meant I had to carry around 20,000 ruppees at all times, which was neither comfortably due to how fat that wad of cash is, not relaxing as I am constantly worried about losing it.

* I finally decided to get an Indian phone number to get around all the OTP nonsense and get some data while walking around. And bam to get an Indian sim card you need an indian ID or as a foreigner go through an application process involving a bunch of documentation (and not trivial documentation, requirements like a picture that matches the exact dimensions accepted by them) and it's not a quick process. Red tape upon red tape to get a sim card for normal usage! Thankfully, someone helped me out with a SIM card they purchased via their govt ID and gave it to me saving me the pain.

* The pain doesn't end here. After I get my sim card, I realize I need to buy a bit more data. Easy enough I think in my head... there's even an app from the provider! I pick the upgraded plan and try to buy via my credit card and boom, international credit cards are not accepted for e-transactions. I literally just want to give them the equivalent of $10 to get an additional 25 gigs of data and I can't do it online. Again, I asked someone to buy it for me and paid them in cash.

* Then I wanted to buy a friend a gift that is only available on Amazon. The red tape strikes, apparently as of this year Amazon India can no longer accept foreign credit cards as methods of payment due to "security and anti-fraud requirements" by the indian govt. Again, I have to find someone to buy it for me from Amazon using their card and pay them cash for it.

The bad is that everything is so needlessly complicated and red-tapey for foreigners. Things that should be trivial are hard.

The good is that you can always find someone to help you circumvent the red-tape by paying them cash :).

> but then you got a phone call later on - naively to upsell something, or the next step up, trying to scam you

This should have been obvious in retrospect. Call spam is India's biggest export.

> Yes, a professional stunt pilot should pay more than someone with a 9 to 5 desk job.

> Yes, someone living in a high risk of car break-ins should pay more for auto insurance.

> Yes, someone living in a low-lying area next to the beach in a place known for hurricanes should pay more for flood insurance than someone living in Colorado.

> What we shouldn't do is charge people more for being of a certain race or gender.

That's a very convenient way to contrast, but where do we draw the line?

For example, should people with genetic diseases pay more? If yes, then how is that different from discriminating race or gender (which are also part of genetics and may affect the risks)? And if not - then why not? Is the reasoning consistent with all the other scenarios you've listed?

Regardless, even if we did agree on a line in the sand, then insurance itself becomes just a class-based amortizer. Rich, fit, genetically lucky people in good neighbors collectively pay less, while the poor, unfit, genetically unlucky people in bad neighbors collectively pay more. Then you might as well not have insurance at all.

> What's your basis for saying it doesn't work? Have you actually tried to get a prepaid wallet at the airport counter and it didn't work for you?

Expecting incoming international passengers to queue up at a solitary shop (and hope that it’s staffed) in an airport arrivals zone, before they exit the airport secure area, isn’t helpful or convenient or “digital”. Because passengers after long flights often just want to exit the airport and get to a comfortable bed. Or even otherwise are prone to making mistakes.

Also, I’ve actually seen the kiosks in two airports unmanned and lying empty (to be fair, early morning arrivals). So even a motivated passenger is not guaranteed to receive service if they arrive at an odd time. So when I say your advice is not helpful, yes, it’s with personal experience.

The apps (one of them funded by YC) are a great alternative to this “line up at a particular spot” madness, and hopefully they’ll improve and become more streamlined over time.

PS. If you say “xx doesn’t need defending its stats speak for itself” you will sound uncritical whether you intend to or not. It’s a classic “shut down debate” line. Perhaps appropriate at the Arnab Goswami school of debate, but out of place elsewhere.

If you use it, are called out, and then see it as a personal attack, that’s unfortunate — certainly not my intention to attack you “personally”, but you’ll need to think about your words too.