Hacker News Reader

Comment by kumarvvr | Hacker News Reader

Adding a contact to whatsapp, for payment means contact spamming. In no time, your phone will be filled with numerous contacts, that you may or may not remember.

India has awesome apps for doing peer to peer payment.

UPI system allows you to create custom UPI id's, linked to your chosen Bank account (you can link more than 1 account, with 1 acc being the active one at any given time, switch between accounts, etc), you can create multiple ID's linked to different bank accounts, you can create hundreds of thousands of ID's to link to invoices, contracts, dates, times, etc. All it takes for a payment is for you to share the ID, or convert it into a QR code for scanning by the other party.

I don't see why WA would take 30% of market share.

Most money transfers are usually commerce related, rather than linked to your social network.

View on HN

> Most money transfers are usually commerce related, rather than linked to your social network.

UPI can be used for everything. Business and friends. And whatsapp wants to pair this with WA business (which itself is growing at an alarming rate. I am getting OTP's from businesses on WA)

If you are already using WA for sending money, why won't you use it for payments? The steps are the same. The interface is the same.

People will always use an app their friends are using. Probably the main reason why Facebook hasn't died. Network effect.

Network effect is true for walled gardens.

In this case, the UPI system is like a utility. Available to all, robust and incredibly low barriers of entry.

Network effect will still take place with these apps. The average Indian does not know UPI is a framework. I have to explain that any UPI app can connect with any other UPI almost weekly.

My father still thinks that Google Pay can only send money to a QR code with the Google Pay logo on it.

In my interactions, even vegetable vendors are, on average, aware that any app will work. For them it is all amalgamated into 'mobile payments'. Most of them have kids who setup the thing and generally, there is high trust in the system, mainly because a transaction is either done or not. There is no done on one end and pending on the other.

> In my interactions, even vegetable vendors are, on average, aware that any app will work.

That's impressive. Every vegetable vendor I meet will ask me to use GPay, because that is what they use.

> If you are already using WA for sending money, why won't you use it for payments?

Yes, Payments to business that exists within WhatsApp. That would not lead to "30%" marketshare.

Case in point - Amazon Pay in India is lagging way behind (~5% marketshare) inspite it having billions and exclusive play within largest ecommerce property in India.

So far, they are only covering P2P cases. Not payments to vendor/shop/businesses, which requires scanning a QR code.

A large majority of shops and vendors operate UPI from the shopkeeper's phone here. It's the same as sending money to him

Reply on news.ycombinator.com