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Here in India, cashless payments through various proprietary and privacy harming platforms, such as PhonePe, Google Pay, Paytm are popular among the city crowds and has become more common due to these elites pushing for it with street vendors. While these platforms use the UPI platform underneath (which is run by a consortium of public, private and foreign banks), most people don’t know about UPI IDs and instead use the linked phone numbers. “Google Pay me” or “Paytm me” is the “Venmo me” (of the U.S.) equivalent here. There are tons of “fintech” companies backed by VCs, each trying to capture a chunk of the market with heavy competition. They sometimes partner with traditional banks to offer services. Meanwhile, the linking of the so-called unique number given to residents (not just citizens), called “Aadhaar”, with bank accounts has resulted in more frauds and thefts through biometric scams (gummy fingers). The Aadhaar number as well as fingerprints are obtained from property registration documents, which are publicly exposed. With UPI, there is a “payment request” mode too. Since digital literacy is extremely low in India, a lot of people have been losing money through various vishing and phishing scams. Getting the money back may also require greasing the palms of law enforcement. As for me, I encourage people to use cash. I use a combination of cash and online payments. I carry all combinations of currency notes and coins to pay for any amount. I also have a rough idea of how much I’d need. Whenever more people realize that the government is tracking their spends (including the push for a retail CBDC), they’ll start switching to cash mainly to evade taxes. So far though, most people have neither realized nor understood privacy concerns, give surveillance, etc. (I’m not blaming the poor and vulnerable sections, who already have a lot more to worry about) |