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Comment by walterbell | Hacker News Reader

India wants to move to biometric payments, http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/19/technology/india-cash-biomet...

"Amitabh Kant said that even electronic payment methods may be "totally redundant" by 2020. Instead, all Indians will need for transactions is their thumb or eye.

"Each one of us in India will be a walking ATM," Kant said at the World Economic Forum in Davos. That would represent "the biggest technological leapfrogging ever in the history of mankind," he added.

... nearly 1.1 billion of India's 1.3 billion people have already registered their biometric data under the government's unique identification program.

The Indian government is testing a payments app that makes use of that biometric data, coupled with portable fingerprint scanners that cost about 2,000 rupees ($30) each."

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Oh boy. This definitely won't have massive fraud issues at all. Nope.

Extracting fingerprints from selfies: http://www.dailydot.com/layer8/peace-sign-selfies-privacy-ri...

Why would you care to extract fingerprints form a selfie when you can extract the finger from the self???

and credit cards dont?

Getting a replacement credit card is much easier than replacement fingerprints or eyes.

> "Each one of us in India will be a walking ATM"

1. Obviously Kant doesn't know what criminals do to ATMs.

2. Every copy of your fingerprint or retina-print out there will also be a potential "ATM" that someone else could withdraw from.

Well faking fingerprints is quite easy if the reader only checks the print but not if the subject actually has a pulse, but I never heard about a faked retina yet...

I have. Here is an 2012 article describing a presentation at Blackhat.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18997580

I gotta figure it's a big risk and an uphill battle trying to push so much technology to such an underdeveloped place. "Biggest technological leapfrogging ever in the history of mankind" may be right, but there's big risks and growing pains that come along with that.

India switched to 100% electronic voting. People accept technology faster than you might assume.

Also since it doesn't have the Visa/Mastercard rent seekiny duopoly and dysfunctional ACH system. It can actually have smoother transition to a UPI based payment system. [1]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Payments_Interface

That's interesting to read. Don't get me wrong, though, I'm not doubting the willingness of the individual end users to accept and get used to it. I'm wondering more about the support infrastructure. Like, do they have reliable enough data nationwide for this? Do they have enough techs and spare parts and such to keep their data networks running around the nation 24/7? Do they have enough people to fix or replace the devices that break? That sort of thing.

This is a pipe dream. Urban India, let alone rural India, dosen't have the infrastructure to support a cashless economy.

What infrastructure? You don't need anything except cell phones and network coverage which urban India has in spades.

26% of the Indian population is illiterate, a much higher proportion is functionally illiterate.

But not the more massive and essential rural India. United someone is going to pay for this.

The network coverage is definitely more comprehensive in India than in the US, in my experience, probably due to the significantly higher population density. I was able to get coverage on a dirt road in the middle of seemingly nowhere in parts of India, while I can't even do the same on many county highway connecting smaller towns in the US.

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