| > This triggered mass adoption of phone payment apps, I worked in the digital payments industry at that time. The sectoral growth was unprecedented during that period. Between Oct 2016 and Jan 2017, transaction value went up 40 times! > UPI payments went from $1.5B in October 2016, to $10B the following month. I stand corrected. The point I was trying to make was that it grew 600% that month, as opposed to 10-20% otherwise. To reach 140B today. > Ah, the endless queues, the needless suffering, the lost jobs and destroyed lives, all made up for by the fact that the urban middle class now has the convenience of UPI! It's not the urban middle class alone who have benefitted. People asking for handouts have UPI ids these days. $1.7T will flow through UPI over the next 12 months, even if you assume it stays at current levels. Credit cards would not have worked in India (if you leave out the wealthy), but UPI does. > Which to repeat myself, did not require bringing the economy to a fucking standstill. And limitations on value of cash transactions aren't a new idea and predate demonetization. The point is that transformation to a digital economy needs to be kick started. It'll take forever otherwise (if you study how various countries have done). > Kick starting India's digital economy did not require bringing the physical economy to a fucking standstill. a) How do you know, given that there's no precedent? b) India still registered decent growth in 2016 and 2017. Economy wasn't in an "effing standstill". |