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Comment by DaiPlusPlus | Hacker News Reader

> 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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Not op, prior to UPI all these transactions were done using cash, credit card penentration in India was quite low.

Minor correction - prior to UPI, transaction either happened via cash OR didn’t happen at all.

I think the hidden value of UPI is that it makes doing business easier which is of huge value. People sitting on money has never helped any economy…especially at the level that UPI operates - ie enabling petty spending greases the wheels of the economy and lifts people out of poverty.

For example, say I want to buy coconut water on a hot day. Earlier, I’d go without if I didn’t have change. Now I use UPI. I benefit from fresh coconut water. The seller benefits from my money going to his bank account.

Even GWB told people to go shopping after 9/11 so that the wheels of the economy would keep churning.

Not necessarily true, most of the petty transactions cater the inelastic demands (like groceries, daily medication etc. ).

That’s almost tautological - if it’s a necessity, you will spend.

It’s the stuff that was above the bottom of Maslow’s needs pyramid that UPI has enabled.

> ie enabling petty spending greases the wheels of the economy and lifts people out of poverty.

The lack of "petty spending" is not the reason India has a poverty problem.

People unwilling or unable to spend cash leads to fewer businesses being formed. This should be obvious.

Therefore, anything which loosens the purse strings should lead to more business activity.

More business activity will lead to better resource allocation and hiring, more auxiliary services cropping up to support novel needs.

All this will lead to fewer poor people.

Now, reverse the arrow. If it were to become harder and harder to spend money, more and more people would fall into poverty.

I'm sure there are ways for anyone interested to purchase an anonymous UPI account, just as there are ways to purchase an anonymous MasterCard now.

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