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Comment by gsa | Hacker News Reader

I really hope cash transactions become a little more normalised in India.

The UPI experience is built for a single audience in mind. It has changed the way people transact in India but at the same time it's been an absolute nightmare for a tourist to play along. The only route for a tourist to use UPI is via third party apps, which charge a markup for loading money (3%). But let's say you accept that as a part of travelling - the limitation of tourist wallets is that they can't be utilised for P2P payments - exactly what UPI is most used for across the country.

Alternative, since no one accepts cash anymore, is that I have to carry thick wads of cash so I can hand out exact change. That still gets you the stink eye because most vendors don't like to deal with cash anymore.

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> the limitation of tourist wallets is that they can't be utilised for P2P payments - exactly what UPI is most used for across the country

Same issue in a lot of Southeast Asia. After jumping through all hoops to get the correct app, id verified and paying a hefty fee, it was still a gamble if the restaurants would have a business QR code or a personal one.

One time in Laos I was on an island that didn't have an ATM, almost no cards were accepted and I had run out of local currency. So I ended up asking for the QR code before ordering at the restaurant to make sure it would work out.

In India it's super annoying when taking autos because the drivers won't have change and in 99% of the cases they have a personal code. So I just ended up using Uber with credit card, much less hassle.

I don't know, central banks seem super afraid of money laundering somehow. But just allow me to spend $100 or what, I just want to buy a quick coffee or a fruit from a street vendor, not a Rolex.

>it's been an absolute nightmare for a tourist

Unfortunately, this cannot be fixed. India has a huge boner for papers, KYC, etc. The state isn't going to let you access payments and communication services without a colonoscopy.

What country doesn't? I hope more people learn about Monero.

So a country of a billion+ people should reverse its very successful digitization efforts because a handful of tourists can’t be bothered to pay a small surcharge?

Smaller, in fact, than what they pay in their own country for credit card fees.

This issue isn't the surcharge but there are still limitations to it. The commercial banks really need to do something like this themselves.

Well they do, but last time I looked you needed to physically go to a branch, but not all branches do it - yeah I'm not going to spend half a day on my trip just to pay slightly easier. It needs to be something you can sign up in the airport in 10 minutes for.

Every time I've been to India I just ended up finding an ATM (that works with my card) and carrying around massive wads of cash. I even stayed at a hotel once that couldn't take international cards.

Governments having absolute control on who can pay who and being able to easily restrict certain groups from participating in the economy is not ideal, though (of course currently tourists being the only group this applies to is not a big deal..)

>The UPI experience is built for a single audience in mind. It has changed the way people transact in India but at the same time it's been an absolute nightmare for a tourist to play along.

Indian built UPI for a single audience AKA their citizens

Read again, this time without whatever blinders you have on. Specifically after the "But let's say you accept that as a part of travelling..." part.

> it's been an absolute nightmare for a tourist to play along.

But the solution to this should be to simplify the tourist experience and to allow payments from foreign banks and cards. Traveling to China has a huge hassle in the late 2010s due to everyone local switching to WeChat/Alipay but it not being available for tourists, but in the last few years (I last visited in 2023), you could use WeChat/Alipay with a non-China bank card.

Sounds like it would be easier to hope for a better UPI experience for tourists.

In 2026, you think cash could become more common instead of less? There is no way that happens unless they jack the fee up and even then…

Tourists can get prepaid UPI.

https://www.npci.org.in/blog/upi-one-world-your-digital-pass...

> P2P payments

Some P2P is between family/friends. Or you are paying rent etc. But a lot of it is business transactions that move funds from one savings account to another because the auto driver is accepting a payment in his mother's or wife's account or something similar. There is so much friction in the banking system if you have to create a current account that this is pretty common.

The system needs to improve drastically to support the two sides instead of letting it be. Should help your use case as well if that happens

If you're worried about the markup for loading your digital wallet, what is the markup for any tourist trying to get cash from eg. Thomas Cook? I doubt any tourist could get currency at a significantly cheaper rate.

Is this a common experience now? I haven’t been there in a while, but one used to be able to use credit cards at bigger establishments and smaller vendors used to accept cash even if UPI was advertised in their shop. Rarely was anyone mad that you didn’t use UPI.

No vendor will say no to cash but having the right small change becomes a PITA in my experience but that was 3 years ago. But even the coconut guy on the corner had a QR code.

> it's been an absolute nightmare for a tourist to play along. The only route for a tourist to use UPI is via third party apps

An NRI account with PhonePe is good enough as someone with OCI, but even in my ancestral town and village Visa and AmEx adoption by payment processors has been high despite no real diaspora or tourism.

And there's no real point in optimizing for the kind of tourist who's going to go visit a slum like Paharganj or go to Kasol to partake in drugs.

That said, I guess it also depends on where an NRI or PIO is from as some states have better payment processor penetration than others.

But tbf, when my SO and I go to VN to visit family, it's the same story there (Momo/Zalo and cash rule Vietnam outside the tourist bubble of D1/D3/Thao Dien/Da Lat/Da Nang/Hanoi and we resort to her Vietcombank account).

Not being able to pay for things is a pretty fundamental problem even for a business traveler to Bangalore.

Last time I bit the bullet and set up Mony, which at least got me access to UPI, but it's limited mostly by government policy: you can't complete the KYC process until you've physically landed in India, can't transfer to personal accounts, fees on adding money, fees on keeping money (they charge "unused balance" fees!), etc.

> Not being able to pay for things is a pretty fundamental problem even for a business traveler to Bangalore

In what situation were you as a foreign traveler where you needed to pay UPI?

Convenience stores and hypermarts like Reliance SMART/Digital and DMart or QuickCommerce platforms like Blinkit accept Visa and AmEx credit cards. Transit via Uber, Ola, and co accept Visa and AmEx credit cards. And most restaurants and bars targeted at outsiders accept Visa and AmEx credit cards. And Hotels accept Visa and AmEx credit cards or can be booked via platforms that accept them like AirBnB.

So transit, residence, restaurants, and convenience stores (all of which will be reimbursed by your employer) are all doable via credit card.

Fundamentally, UPI was built for India3, as were other peers across Asia, not foreigners.

But my SO and I never understood the tay ba lo mindset. Catering to them is what kept Thailand and the Dominican Republic stuck in tourism-induced Dutch disease because it incentivizes extractive and low productivity economic sectors like real estate and low skill services at the expense of human capital development and investing in high productivity industries.

> In what situation were you as a foreign traveler where you needed to pay UPI?

All the time? Credit cards are only accepted by fancy places and cash is increasingly a hassle, especially in a tech-forward place like BLR.

The final straw was when I bought some biryani at a shopping mall food court and tried to pay cash. They had no change, the neighboring stalls had no change, and this wasn't some plot to extract money from the gora, they genuinely didn't have and couldn't find small bills.

In the end they tried to wave it off and discount my meal by 40 rupees or something, and I rounded up by 60 instead. And I remember thinking I probably just created another problem, because now they need to balance the books and parcel out the cash tip without change.

> In what situation were you as a foreign traveler where you needed to pay UPI?

If you live in a tiny bubble and only take an Uber to the Work Campus, Uber to the small number of marts you've found that accept card, Uber to the small number of restaurants that accept card... you have to find them first of course.

Want to buy some cigarettes while you take a stroll in the evening? Good luck. Want a tuktuk to take you a mile across the beautifully walkable road infrastructure? Good luck. Want to get lunch with friends? Good luck.

90% of life doesn't exist inside the corpo "work hotel sleep" bubble, I described it to somebody as akin to trying to pay with bank transfer in the UK, technically you can do it... the manager will come out and spend 20 mins futzing, taxi drivers may be able to do it if you ask nicely, your shopping options will be very limited and far between because you're trying to transact in the non-predominant medium.

Yes, loads of places accept card, larger stores accept card, want coffee? Blue Tokai accepts card. Want Blinkit or Zomato? You need an Indian number first. Want a Hotel? Booking.com is predominantly "pay at the hotel" across most of India, which means it's a dice roll as to whether they'll accept card. You'd be surprised at how many hotels completely forget that not all customers are Indian+Aadhaar+UPI, except by the time you've got there and realized they accept neither C-form nor Card despite telling you explicitly they do - you've already spent the time, money and effort getting there only to find out that no... it's not practical in reality for you to book a hotel and pay for whatever reason. Repeat ad-nauseum everywhere daily

> Want to buy some cigarettes while you take a stroll in the evening

Why would you go buy a beedi from the local paan-wala?

> Want a tuktuk to take you a mile across the beautifully walkable road infrastructure

Why would you call an auto or e-rickshaw when you could call and pay for via Uber (which also does autorickshaw pairing)

> 90% of life doesn't exist inside the corpo "work hotel sleep" bubble

OP was talking about "business travel".

> You'd be surprised at how many hotels completely forget that not all customers are Indian+Aadhaar+UPI

They aren't forgetting. They just don't care about a foreign traveler. It's the same when I travelled to China outside of the foreigner bubble on multiple occasions

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At the end of the day, foreigner who can afford India1 but is consuming like India3 is a waste. Doesn't matter if it's a backpacker or a kanjusi NRI.

> Why would you call an auto or e-rickshaw when you could call and pay for via Uber (which also does autorickshaw pairing)

I don't know when the last time was when you were in India, but using Uber to hail auto rickshaws requires direct payment to the driver at the end of the ride. Uber does not handle payments. Your credit cards are of no use for this. The driver will either take cash (without having change) or probably UPI.

Why would you go for a masala dosa with filter kaapi with your colleagues when you could order a hamburger from room service? Why would you hail an auto when you could just charter a helicopter instead?

Why visit India when you can book an entire floor of the JW Marriott Aerocity in Delhi...

Yearly I spend, on swiggy alone, more lakh than most bengaluru techs get paid.

I think there are solutions to the UPI problem which are not whatever this is. Cash has been a huge pain point in India for a while now.

> The only route for a tourist to use UPI is via third party apps, which charge a markup for loading money (3%).

Or a credit card.

Don't visit India, problem solved.

UPI is not perfect but me as a white piggu tourist handling monopoly money isn't much better.

> which charge a markup for loading money (3%).

.... the markup being what the credit card companies charge them.

I mean this sounds like an edgecase, which is good tradeoff for the ~billion of people who this system is designed for.

Essentially UPI was there to stop the industrial fraud and money laundering that was going on india. I have not actually checked the efficacy of this though. The last time I checked was when modi made the largest bank note not legal tender.

That part aside it does sounds like VAT (a 20% sales tax on all purchases) but for transactions.

It affects everyone who visits India, so it's not really an edge case. I'm sure there are plenty of towns in India that is primarily tourism-based.

Ok I get that, but 9 million people a year is less than 0.1% of the population. so they wouldn’t even show up in p99 stats.

For something as sensitive as a payment system you need to go way further than p99. Like way, way further

for reliability, sure, for fraud, also.

But making sure that tourists don't pay a 3% charge, and/or can't do p2p? naaa. thats deliberate.

tourists are rich, generally, and can be a rich source of money laundering options.

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