Comment by thisislife2
6 months ago
The US is way, way behind in banking P2P technology / fintech adoption. In many parts of Asia, even uneducated street vendors now accept digital payments via mobile phones (that's how easy it is). See - https://www.forbes.com/sites/pennylee/2024/04/17/the-us-lags... and
I would rather not have the kind of "financial innovation" that requires non-free apps running on non-free operating systems on locked down hardware. These apps, by design, track how people spend their money.
I cannot stress how much I do not care. Nor does anyone else.
I want to be able to run software on my device, not fulfill some nuts low-rent fantasy that they're a rebel against the government.
Traditional banks have about as much data about how you spend your money as any modern fintech. The banking system is non-free, locked down and centralized to begin with. How you access it is just a matter of cosmetics and policies.
> These apps, by design, track how people spend their money.
That depends - In India, for example, I am free to use either (1) a private company's app (like PayTM, Google Pay, PaisePe etc.) (2) a Government app or (3) my Bank's app to make digital payment using the Unified Payment Interface (UPI) (or all 3). And, if I don't want to use any mobile app, I can still make offline payment through my mobile phone over USSD - https://razorpay.com/blog/how-to-make-offline-upi-payments/ ...
(You are right though that it is prone to abuse in the absence of strong privacy and data protection laws - digital payment does allow new form of surveillance capitalism to the corporates and new avenues of authoritarian control to the government).