Skip to main content

POST Post-cash choices in India

xxx

Unified Payment Interface, or UPI, provided by various banks could be considered safer than other modes in this respect. In case of UPI, one needs to enter only the Virtual Payment Address, or VPA, of the recipient, which is more secure and easy than sharing credentials such as account numbers and IFSC codes.

From Digital payment: Post demonetisation, which digital payment method to use? Here’s how to choose - The Economic Times

xxx

 

xxx

According to provisional data released by the Reserve Bank of India on Monday night, the usage of debit and credit cards at point-of-sale (PoS) terminals has declined in January after peaking in December.

From Digital transactions decline in January as cash crunch eases - Livemint

I think, however, that there is some evidence that India’s transition to post-cash economy is real and that the electronic alternatives have traction. In true Clayton Christensen disruptive innovation tradition, I look to the less-regulated corners of the market and the margins of conventional products to uncover the next big thing. And here, I note, that not only are the red light districts responding to the new order by adopting mobile payments, but so are kidnappers.

The modus operandi of the criminals came to the fore with the abduction of 26-year-old resident of Indore, Harish Chouhan. After being released by abductors after recieving ransom through a PayTM account,

From Mathura kidnappers accept online payments - Vrindavan Today

Not Bitcoin, I note. So, I think that we can conclude that mobile payments do indeed provide a viable post-cash infrastructure but that early adopters of new payment technologies are responding positively to the challenges of the transition. All good news for us on the digital money side of the means of exchange fence.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

new survey results from USA Technologies (USAT) suggest. The payments technology company, which enables electronic payments for self-service machines, compared consumer spending activity at 35 of its vending machines in urban areas with a high concentration of iPhone users between week one and week four of the installation of new digital signage promoting Apple Pay. Consumers made more contactless purchases: The vending machine providers saw an average contactless transaction revenue increase of 89%, implying that consumers are making more mobile payments. This was likely driven by the clear advertisement of Apple Pay. Total transactions increased: Consumers made more purchases overall. This was probably driven by an uptick in mobile payments, given the major increase in contactless transaction revenue. And the vending machines may have attracted many first-time users who were drawn in by the digital advertising of Apple Pay. Boosting awareness is key to unlocking pent-up demand amon...

David | LinkedIn

Alex Todd rather kindly called this a “most lucid explanation of digital identity management” I would highly recommend this presentation to anyone interested in understanding prospective blockchain based identity architectures From David | LinkedIn This is very kind, but as I said in the link, this is thinking out loud and far from a fully-developed solution. We’re working on parts of this for different clients and I can see that there is something there - a genuinely new way of solving some old problems - but it’s early days.

We could fix mobile security, you know. We don't, but we could

Earlier in the week I blogged about mobile banking security , and I said that in design terms it is best to assume that the internet is in the hands of your enemies. In case you think I was exaggerating… The thieves also provided “free” wireless connections in public places to secretly mine users’ personal information. From Gone in minutes: Chinese cybertheft gangs mine smartphones for bank card data | South China Morning Post Personally, I always use an SSL VPN when connected by wifi (even at home!) but I doubt that most people would ever go to this trouble or take the time to configure a VPN and such like. Anyway, the point is that the internet isn’t secure. And actually SMS isn’t much better, which is why it shouldn’t really be used for securing anything as important as home banking. The report also described how gangs stole mobile security codes – which banks automatically send to card holders’ registered mobile phones to verify online transactions – by using either a Trojan...