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Weird Indian obsession with UPI

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Lobogris

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I can never understand why Indians are so obsessed with UPI. It's ok for small payments like Rs20 at a small vendor who doesn't accept cards. At larger shops, where you can simply tap your credit or debit card in a second, I see educated, well off looking people fumble with UPI apps, entering the amount, then their pin and often the scan doesn't work or the payment doesn't go through because of cellular network inside the store and so on. So much time wasted along with the hassle. Yesterday, I was behind a lady at Haldirams and she tried to scan 10 times and the cashier had to reset the scan screen multiple times. UPI is great when the user is poor or uneducated and doesn't have a credit card or when the establishment doesn't accept them. Why are educated people with credit cards so enamoured of it? Isn't it better to just tap your credit card and get 1 to 3% cashback or points and skip the hassle?
 
I am perfectly clam. I wasn’t furious at her. It was a simple question. My simple point was that for people who have a card and at places where cards are easily accepted, why do people choose a more difficult option?
If you are paying several lakhs then you are missing out even more rewards on the card plus various offers from banks that provide discounts.
It's not difficult. How you feel it difficult???

For contactless txn people have fear of getting card stolen.

Yes, in other country it's normal like UPI here.

But it is what it is.

Both is simpler, people have better practice on UPI so it comes handy.

It's not something that needs to be discussed 🤭.
 
It's not difficult. How you feel it difficult???

For contactless txn people have fear of getting card stolen.

Yes, in other country it's normal like UPI here.

But it is what it is.

Both is simpler, people have better practice on UPI so it comes handy.

It's not something that needs to be discussed 🤭.
Sir, it is more difficult than tapping a card. There is no way card can be stolen while tapping.
 
People are getting confused. Obviously its every person’s choice. I am not stopping anyone. I was only trying to understand why people are preferring a more difficult option. In fact, I had a polite discussion with her later and she said it is individual preference. Had a similar discussion at a petrol station recently where a police officer (on a family holiday) was struggling to pay via UPI and his son was trying to help and it took them over 5 minutes while I tapped my card in a second and got 6.25% cashback on SBI BPCL Octane. He didn’t really have a logical reason and said similar things like UPI is easy bla bla. I think people are just used to it and fail to see the beauty of card tap and pay.
What you say to be a difficult option, might be an easy option for them. Some prefer UPI convenience, some prefer card reward points/cashback. I have had instances where card tap and pay didn't work on POS and had to manually enter PIN ( this was inconvenience for me, I would have rather paid using UPI) .
Maybe people prefer the ease of using UPI rather than having to carry a card.
 
Sir, it is more difficult than tapping a card. There is no way card can be stolen while tapping.
no-its-not-nope.gif

As I said, it's all about practice.
 
I see here OP has been putting a lot of focus on Tap & Pay. Yes it might be convenient as it doesn't require a PIN. But it has major security issues, what will happen if someone looses his card and have no idea about the same? Who will pay for the fraudulent transaction that might have taken place bcoz of this? Moreover upi is equally stable as compared to dc/cc. The network issues that a person will have on his smartphone will be same for pos as they run on basic sim cards only. Bank downtime can be for upi as well as cc/dc.
UPI is also a lot safer as compared to dc/cc as access can be gained for cards easily and not for upi. If cc info gets leaked, again fraudulent transactions can go through, but this will never happen with upi, as it will require your sim, and your pin.
 
Don't just see the act of tapping. You also have to wait till the guy takes the PoS machine, feeds the amount gets to the tap page and then tap.

Also the range of transactions are limited on till Rs. 5000, whereas. UPI transactions can be done upto 1lakh
At larger places, the cashier simply taps a button on their screen that chooses UPI, credit card or cash. It takes a second only. No separate POS machine is required. It’s mostly built in or already on the counter.
 
UPI obsession is is due to following:
1) Started picking up really fast during Covid and came down to lower transaction values for contactless needs.
2) Avoids "chillar" and "Trophies" issue. We have all read the reports that how chocolate sales dipped post UPI success.
3) No charge up to Rs. 2000, so merchants are readily accepting it as its instantly credited to merchant's account. Additionally for CC, merchants themselves are not co-operative do to MDR.
4) We are going through the same phase in which China went through last decade. Look how "AliPay" grew.
5) Let me know if someone offers unlisted shares of "NPCI". Will be happy to lap it up. 🙂
 
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