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by zorro58
2141 days ago
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UPI is a fascinating battle field of tech companies. I had a front seat to some of the negotiations happening to build platforms on UPI. There was a fear in India that foreign tech companies would monopolize that platform. Concurrent with negotiations to build on UPI, there were also leaks and stories by both sides in the press to bolster or communicate positions. For example, there was one story where an official said that a tech CEO made a commitment. The tech CEO did not make that commitment. That company's team had their own set of meeting notes confirming their position. Other companies were livid with the tech company for supposedly taking that position. With the story now published, the tech company could not publicly deny the story or else they would anger the other side. So they quietly rolled with it. It is also a credit to PayTM's CEO. Their CEO saw that succeeding with UPI was a matter of survival. Backed up against a wall, he fought back against his competitors with everything he had and is winning so far. Someone needs to write a book on the behind the scenes happenings. |
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Given PayTM’s losses[1,2], I find “winning” an odd choice of words.
The reality is that digital payments in India experienced an artificial “bump” following India’s ill-thought demonetisation experiment, which has evaporated since. And what growth there is, is on vendor-neutral UPI (which Facebook, Google, Jio et al can all use) rather than proprietary e-wallets like PayTM.
[1] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/...
[2] https://www.livemint.com/companies/news/paytm-sees-its-losse...