Comment by zaptheimpaler
2 months ago
India has had UPI since 2016 now and recently overtook Visa and Mastercards global transaction volume with 650 million transactions per day [1]. These payment processors seem to be basically levying a 1-3% tax on a nations entire GDP and enforcing their own ideas of what transactions should or shouldn't be allowed. With UPI and Pix etc. paving the way and showing its possible, it actually sounds insane to give so much money and power to some private company that provides a worse product, for nation-critical infrastructure.
[1] https://organiser.org/2025/07/22/304055/bharat/a-fintech-rev...
First things first — this is correct. As a matter of fact, the Brazillian Pix - which gets much more “eyeballs” on places like HN, are much newer than UPI and UPI was one of the inspirations, if I may say so, behind it; and it dwarves in scale. Not to mention UPI is designed to be decentralised (almost decentralised).
Fair warning (pc, please know that I am not targeting you) about the URL pc has shared - it’s literally the mouthpiece of India’s ultra right mothership org (it’s literally called that - mother org - RSS) which is affiliated with BJP (in fact practically BJP, the authoritarian ruling party, is a branch/child of this org). And they are known for omitting and distorting history and context.
Here you go - some alt sources -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Payments_Interface
But UPI is a product - real deal comes from here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Payments_Corporatio...
These sources and alt sources also will highlight the history and thinking behind all this.
Like or dislike this Govt (tbh: I clearly fall in latter bracket) but I think payments is one arena (among many) where India is going really great and there many great things lined up. Luckily India is in a position right now to deliver a loud and unequivocal “F— You” to efforts from entities like MC/Visa when they try to assert their “birthright” of monopolising the world.
This is disgusting. Calling the biggest democratic party as authoritarian is nothing but disgusting.
Why do you people think you and your opinions are better than majority?
https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/in...
https://thediplomat.com/2025/04/modis-india-is-a-dangerous-p...
https://theprint.in/opinion/authoritarian-streak-among-india...
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/07/04/m...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00167...
This isn’t a fringe view or “disgusting”
2 replies →
You really need to up your game if you think the world's most awarded and most popular Premier (PM Modi) and the most hard working political party (BJP) India has ever got, can be tarnished by someone snidely taking political potshots at Modi+BJP's most famous and incredible achievement yet: UPI.
It is poor manners to deride the visionary leaders of modern India as "authoritarian" when they ensured India remains world's biggest & most vibrant democracy and swiftly scaled the nation to a $5Trillion economy! That's why Modi has been democratically elected as PM for third time in a row!
Now back to the main topic at hand..
First and foremost, UPI is India's most popular real-time unified payments system and it is completely dominating the digital payments scene in India, because it is instantaneous, free for consumers (marginal fees applicable only for high value transactions, and where Interchange conversion is involved). UPI is so good and versatile, that its managing organisation NCPI is able to license the technology stack to other nations, who are then able to promptly launch their own branding of this versatile and powerful digital payments system.
Secondly, sheer scale of UPI is mind-boggling indeed.
In June 2025, UPI (Unified Payments Interface) recorded 18.39 billion transactions, with a transaction value of ₹24.03 lakh crore. The daily average for June 2025 was 613 million transactions and ₹80,131 crore. UPI has shown strong year-on-year growth of 32% in volume and 20% in value compared to June 2024.
Thanks to UPI, the payments situation has changed so drastically in India, that most banks are accounting for 85%+ payment transactions volumes through UPI itself!
Even the poorest people in India are using UPI ubiquitously and safely, it is that trustworthy, instantaneous and seamlessly easy to use.
No wonder Visa, MasterCard, and their ilk are terrified and desperate in India. Their vicious stranglehold has been broken, and how!
Goodness :D
You (all; I see couple of fledgling hners) just proved me correct in a way :/
> the world's most awarded and most popular Premier (PM Modi) and the most hard working political party (BJP) India has ever got
You forget to mention "Most UNESCO certified Best PM".
> It is poor manners to deride the visionary leaders of modern India as "authoritarian"
Hawww. You make me sad. I am sad now. Sorry?
But please answer me first - why are you addressing Him as just "Modi"? Wouldn't it be "Hon'ble Modi Ji" or at the least something like "Respected Modi Ji". You bad!
> Their vicious stranglehold has been broken, and how!
Hail!!!!! Hail!!!!
The fees are capped at 0.3% in EU and most countries have their own systems that are more popular.
The reason the credit card monopolies exist is they work globally.
But vast majority of people make most their transactions domestically. Why cater for the minority? Also, both can exist.
the vast majority of people doesn't care about payment technology/channels, they just want it to be convenient and work and not having to context shift between "if i pay on vacation i need to use this card, if i pay this guy i need to use this app, etc"
> These payment processors seem to be basically levying a 1-3% tax on a nations entire GDP
You're exaggerating for effect. GDP is the total value of all goods and services sold or bought; only a fraction of which is paid for with a credit card. I doubt an F35 is purchased with a Visa.
> These payment processors seem to be basically levying a 1-3% tax for the convenience of using their service, and we are willingly paying it.
Fixed.
India also has the RuPay system which is a direct competitor to Visa/Mastercard and it has long overtaken Visa as the top provider.
It’s also available in many global markets like SEA, GCC and others.
Fun fact: UAE's "Jaywan" cards (currently Debit Cards only) is UAE initiative to replace Visa, Mastercards, etc., and Jaywan itself is based on India's NCPI org's technology stack used for RuPay. So Jaywan is RuPay tech implemented in UAE! Other countries are following suit as NCPI has taken extraordinary efforts to make this technology stack versatile, scalable, interoperable, robust, resilient and easy to implement and customize.
So India is becoming the world leader in digital payments!