[redtriumph]

In India, privacy is always secondary. I remember, last time I was at jewelry shop in Western MH, I had to provide PAN card or Aadhar card since purchase warranted this check. W/o even thinking, folks in my family forwarded those details on Whatsapp.

[nindalf]

PAN Card - Tax identification

Aadhaar - “Universal” identifier. Needed for pretty much anything. Including, apparently, buying jewellery.

[d3nj4l]

AFAIK you're only required to give these details when your total bill exceeds a certain amount (~50,000?) and it's largely because buying gold/jewelry is a vector of money laundering and tax avoidance. I don't buy jewelry but ran into this recently when my mother wanted some.

[el-salvador]

Is it like in El Salvador, where the Unique ID number is even needed to pay the $2 water bill?

[GekkePrutser]

So if you're a tourist you can't buy anything? Weird.

Spain has a similar thing for this, you have to give your NIE/DNIe number everywhere. Like when ordering something online. But not in brick and mortar shops.

Still I find it a very poor practice in terms of privacy.

[pradn]

Buying stuff through QR codes is very common in India now. You can pay for everything from groceries to street food using QR codes. It runs off the government-sponsored UPI standard. However, AFAIK you need an Indian bank account to be able to participate. It's quite a pain coming from abroad, and I just used cash instead. That does mean I have am prone to paying foreign withdrawal fees, but alas. It does work pretty well for the people of India though.