Digital Payment Systems - Differing Views
Why is it that India is the only country with a government created smartphone payment system (aka UPI upon which all mobile payment apps from from PayTM to PhonePe to BHIM to Google Pay are built)? How come China’s private sector payment apps (WeChat and AliPay) are now so ubiquitous that cash is not even accepted in more and more places across the country? The other side of the coin – and the very curious one – is that no Western country has built any such smartphone based digital payment system. What’s going on? I thought the answer lay in the fact that MasterCard, VISA, and the banks of the West lobby against any such system since it would eat into their commissions. While that’s definitely part of the reason, Anirudh Suri’s book, The Great Tech Game , reminded me that there are other reasons as well. An additional reason why countries like India and China took the move, writes Suri, is that the current banking system to move money across countries, the SWIFT sy...