Thanks very much! I would love to hear your comments.
I think UPI is incredible and well loved because it's free - putting a toll on something moving at this insane speed is just going to slow it down tremendously.
I think UPI is incredible and well loved because it's free - putting a toll on something moving at this insane speed is just going to slow it down tremendously.
Personally I don’t think UPI will ever go to a fully-paid model, but I’d love to know what you think about the potential for a “freemium” model, eg with payment protection or improved anti fraud built in. My sense is that combating fraud/abuse costs money and currently UPI essentially relies on the customer not making mistakes, and if they do get defrauded they have to work the Indian justice system to get their money back — not easy at the best of times.
Also about this
> Banks earn 50x to 100x more than the cost of UPI/payments in just float income
A bunch of banks complained about loss of float income with RTGS & IMPS, is there any information about how they see UPI (which is built on IMPS?) affecting float? (I get that they have a lot of float income, but many Indian banks appear to be very inefficient and that float money is probably being used elsewhere already.)
Finally, internet shutdowns — today apparently a huge chunk of transactions are cash-based in India. But UPI’s clearly growing fast — and as it grows further, will the Indian government’s propensity to kill mobile data at the slightest sign of trouble affect people’s perception of UPI, by making it seems less reliable than cash? Or is there hope India will revisit internet shutdowns?
Thank you!
Indeed internet shutdowns are a problem but i think the state will have to move out of shutdowns as UPI gets popular. You are right, that is a pain.
They will not. They will double down. They will develop tooling to shut down just the people they need to to cripple any movement, and if you don't think they will, just look at the U.S.
(just a joke, this won't work due to limitations of data storage and blockspace, without even going into the can of worms that is governments interacting with a "independent" blockchain)
Things are so silly that numbers cost money now. Many imagined the dystopian future where people are numbers but few could picture it this dark... You would think you got your own number and are stuck with it. In stead you merely get to rent a number and if you cant pay the rent the system is to troll you hard for god knows how long.
How is this superior to cash?
Tiered just doesn't help if you want to encourage growth...it caps growth. Only very few large merchants will pay who already pay for debit or credit cards. Many of them pay for UPI anyhow as gateways charge a platform fee.
Banks are paid by float for all payments including neft, cheques and cash atm, all of which are free for small amounts and UPI is defined as a small amount. When float income stops then it makes sense to think of charging for upi.