Where Digital Payments, even for a 10-Cent Chai,
Are Colossal in Scale:
India’s homegrown instant payment system has remade commerce and pulled millions into the formal economy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/01/business/india-digital-payments-upi.html
The scan-and-pay system is one pillar of what the country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, has championed as “digital public infrastructure,” with a foundation laid by the government. It has made daily life more convenient, expanded banking services like credit and savings to millions more Indians, and extended the reach of government programs and tax collection.
With this network, India has shown on a previously unseen scale how rapid technological innovation can have a leapfrog effect for developing nations, spurring economic growth even as physical infrastructure lags. It is a public-private model that India wants to export as it fashions itself as an incubator of ideas that can lift up the world’s poorer nations.
India’s homegrown instant payment system has remade commerce and pulled millions into the formal economy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/01/business/india-digital-payments-upi.html
The scan-and-pay system is one pillar of what the country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, has championed as “digital public infrastructure,” with a foundation laid by the government. It has made daily life more convenient, expanded banking services like credit and savings to millions more Indians, and extended the reach of government programs and tax collection.
With this network, India has shown on a previously unseen scale how rapid technological innovation can have a leapfrog effect for developing nations, spurring economic growth even as physical infrastructure lags. It is a public-private model that India wants to export as it fashions itself as an incubator of ideas that can lift up the world’s poorer nations.
In Payments, Like Geopolitics, India Seeks a Third
Way
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/in-payments-like-geopolitics-india-seeks-a-third-way/2023/03/01/50363824-b87f-11ed-b0df-8ca14de679ad_story.html
The next step is to export this system more widely. India’s tech czars look forward to a time when the UPI and other such Indian platforms link up with counterparts in the emerging world, to create a bottom-up network for small cross-border payments. The hope is to connect small- and medium-sized enterprises in these countries to their customers and suppliers, and to cut out traditional banks’ role in financing these transactions. Since India is the biggest destination for remittances, other payments networks have a clear incentive to partner with the UPI.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/in-payments-like-geopolitics-india-seeks-a-third-way/2023/03/01/50363824-b87f-11ed-b0df-8ca14de679ad_story.html
The next step is to export this system more widely. India’s tech czars look forward to a time when the UPI and other such Indian platforms link up with counterparts in the emerging world, to create a bottom-up network for small cross-border payments. The hope is to connect small- and medium-sized enterprises in these countries to their customers and suppliers, and to cut out traditional banks’ role in financing these transactions. Since India is the biggest destination for remittances, other payments networks have a clear incentive to partner with the UPI.
These Two Global Money Transfer Ideas Deserve a
Shot
Singapore links digital payments with India after Thailand
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Finance/Singapore-links-digital-payments-with-India-after-Thailand
https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2022/10/26/cf-how-indias-central-bank-helped-spur-a-digital-payments-boom
https://www.imf.org/-/media/Files/Publications/Fandd/Article/2022/September/digital-journey-india.ashx
India’s digital payment volume has climbed at an average annual rate of about 50 percent over the past five years. That itself is one of the world’s fastest growth rates, but its expansion has been even more rapid—about 160 percent annually—in India’s unique, real-time, mobile-enabled system, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). Transactions more than doubled, to 5.86 billion, in June from a year earlier as the number of participating banks jumped 44 percent, to 330. Values nearly doubled in the same period.