Comment by alightsoul
6 hours ago
It's not different, many countries already have their own version of it, you just don't hear about them. India's UPI has more users but you don't hear about it.
Maybe we hear about it because, it's right in the US' backyard and the biggest country there is Brazil from which pix comes from. All these payment systems threaten visa and Mastercard but pix is the largest in the US' backyard because the country it comes from, Brazil, is the largest there.
And it's also government run, dun dun dun. The us hates anything that is government run. That's why they hate china and communists and socialism so much.
Agree that PIX bothers the US more because it's directly under US (self assessed) area of influence. But the reason is not some philosophical alignment, but rather deep rooted lobbying practices.
Evidence of high levels of power political pressure - US latest 25% tariff pressure came out explicitly around this topic - https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/brazil-us-clash-ove...
Right, but PIX on their website says they're expanding to Europe, which makes me wonder what do they have to offer on this heavily saturated market.
India's UPI is practically impossible to use even for tourists in India. It's not serving the same role as Visa and MasterCard.
How is it impossible to use? Apparently everyone in India is using it? Apparently only tourists face issues with it?
With visa and Mastercard you pay transaction fees and rent for a card terminal aka card reader, which are lower or non existent with these homegrown or local P2P payment systems. Outside western developed countries aka the US and the richest European countries like France, Germany, that's enough to stop using visa and Mastercard.
2 years ago, you needed Indian number to use UPI.
Took me 2 visit to fully setup. First visit to India, they are like I need a debit card. I hate debit cards, but I got it. Which got delivered to my US address. When I got there, they are like I need Indian number and I have to do KYC to update. 3rd visit, I got everything working. At that point, they also let you use US number. But I wouldn't recommend US number as roaming is expensive if you have ATT.
You also have to disable developer mode and can't root the device.
Impossible for tourists to use yes. You need an Indian bank account and there are services ostensibly for tourists but they still don't work everywhere, for example many vendors will want friend payments instead of business payments because they don't want to pay the surcharge.
Tourist UPI only permits P2M payments, and most normal transactions (as well as refunds) are conducted P2P.
UPI used to be good, but they started adding charges after Visa and Mastercard lobbied D.C. probably with huge bribes. And the Indian government is spineless against D.C.