[jagira]

Why does USA not have a system like UPI (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Payments_Interface)? It simpler, easier and cheaper (mostly free).

[paulddraper]

Most countries, let alone the USA, do not have a system like UPI.

That UPI was agreed upon by enough people was a happy accident for India.

[hatfortguy]

Whilst not quite UPI, the UK has a pay-via-text (sms or Whatsapp) system that nearly every person has access to but barely anyone uses. It amazes me how people naturally gravitate to card-based payments, even when Visa and MasterCard are taking a cut.

[krtkush]

UPI must be the single greatest thing that have come out of India in recent years; digital payments made absolutely simple.

[abvdasker]

Having done a UPI integration for a well-known multinational tech company, I consider it a mixed bag. For the end-user it's a great concept and continues to revolutionize payments in India. It's convenient and it will help India transition away from a cash economy. UPI is clearly the future.

However, UPI currently has a lot of problems. Number one is that to use UPI as a payment method for your product you have to integrate with one of India's banks, which in my experience are almost uniformly technically very bad. They provide almost no documentation, have frequent and often severe service outages, and don't even come close to meeting their availability SLAs. I'm sure over time it will improve but as it stands many of India's banks are not technically capable enough to support UPI with the level of reliability that most businesses require.

[cmonnow]

> have to integrate with one of India's banks

what you mention as a disadvantage is the biggest advantage. cut out the card men.

Banks' technical prowess will catch up. That is the solution. Not introducing a middle man just because he is technically better now.

[kuschku]

Which is the same idea as SEPA-ICT or the German girocard system.

Cut out the middle men, the card companies, and suddenly everything is 2-3% cheaper, and faster, and simpler.

[trickstra]

Cut out the middle men, the banks, use Bitcoin and you'll shave even the rest of the fees off.

[cmonnow]

There are middle men in bitcoin. In fact, there are a million middle men. But you trust those million men, rather than the 10 who run the bank.

Anyways, it's about how much money you're willing to spend for trust/safety/risk-mitigation/speed.

Cost of item - $100

$100.05 - pay via Bitcoin. In case of fraud, suck it up.

$102 - pay via Bank. In case of fraud, complain to bank, who are slow to resolve it.

$105 - pay via CC, (and pay them via Bank). In case of fraud, complain to CC company, who are faster in resolving it.

Both Bank and CC are basically an escrow service. One provides a bit more security than other, and correspondingly charges more for it.

If you're OK with not needing that security, cut out the middle men.

Going along your analogy lines, cut out even the Bitcoin middle man, or any kind of currency, and directly barter/trade goods.

[kuschku]

Bitcoin is actually more expensive than SEPA transfers or girocard payments, and slower to resolve (and just as impossible to reverse as SEPA transfers).

[pas]

Why isn't there a central bank provider for this? Now every bank has to implement their own.

[inapis]

There is a central provider called NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India). They run the entire network and control who gets on or not. Banks are used as the integration point because UPI necessitated a bank account to run out of. Since you’re directly debiting money out of someone’s account you can’t exactly turn away the bank and when they are on-board it makes sense to use them as an integration partner for legal reasons (as well as customer support).

[pas]

The merchant's bank account should be just a parameter you plug into some account at NPCI, and that's it.

Sure, the banks should do the chargeback/fraud management, but the IT interface toward the merchants should be completely standardized.