Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ramraj07 1024 days ago
Just remember that all else being equal, UPI is still a far more impressive system. Here’s the reasons:

1. A 100x higher volume on a normal day.

2. A highly effective and equitable system that somehow managed to succeed in one of the most corrupt and beauracratic nations.

3. The majority of its users can barely read, if at all. Not to mention all the languages involved.

UPI is impressive because it actually made a difference in the lives of the poor. Probably the first piece of internet technology to have a measurable effect on the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

So yeah the case sounds rested in my perspective.

EDIT: also sounds like Swish charges a fee to the banks? Sounds a bit outrageous for a payment system trying to be the best in the world to charge a fee.

2 comments

> EDIT: also sounds like Swish charges a fee to the banks? Sounds a bit outrageous for a payment system trying to be the best in the world to charge a fee.

FWIW, NPCI charges all banks for UPI too. They’ve been eating most of those costs because the government didn’t allow them to charge (now those charges are slowly coming in). Banks haven’t been happy with the zero MDR regime for UPI.

According to here: https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/money-and-banking/npci-...

Doesn’t apply for transactions less than ₹2000 ($24 usd). Might sound like a small amount but most Indian transactions won’t cross that. And the fee doesn’t apply to p2p anyway.

Well volume wasn't the question here (but yes, it's hard to beat anything Chinese or Indian w/o being global). As for literacy most illiterates should be able to use Swish.

Nr 2 though is something that I think might be a reverse though, looking globally mobile payments seems to have been a hit in markets with less well functioning traditional money and credit/debit card markets.

In Sweden cards's (most often debit) with tap-to-pay still rules for most b2c cases like established restaurants, stores and anything with slightly higher value. Swish was mostly started out to facilitate non-commercial person-to-person cases but has now displaced most lower value cash usage (person to person, small vendors, temporary venues).

I frankly don't even know if I have physical money in my wallet anymore since.. well I've not used physical money in a couple of years now iirc.