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Comment by bergenty | Hacker News Reader

And the EU system is way behind India’s UPI. That system really is a dream. It turned India into the world’s largest real time payment market and basically is Google’s model for FedNow they’re pitching to the federal government. It’s also what the EU is trying to emulate.

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Woah, I did not know about India's UPI. And it serves more than India!

Check it out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Payments_Interface

    Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is an instant real-time payment system developed by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). The interface facilitates inter-bank peer-to-peer (P2P) and person-to-merchant (P2M) transactions.[1][2] UPI is an open source application programming interface (API) that runs on top of Immediate Payment Service (IMPS).[3][4] It is regulated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and works by instantly transferring funds between two bank accounts on a mobile platform.

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"Markets" here means some limited ability to transfer to/from India, but nobody uses UPI for domestic transactions in these places.

Singapore has an equivalent system called PayNow, which is equally instant and ubiquitous.

PayNow (NETS) works with ~5 banks and is effective within a place as large as major city. Hardly an analog.

I'm responding to the earlier claim that UPI can be used in Singapore (or anywhere outside India), which is really not the case.

Yeah, it's a dream come true. When I got my first credit card, I was very happy. But later within 2 years UPI got introduced, my credit card activity got decreased because it is far more easy to do transaction with UPI than CCs.

And when Indian Government declared BankNote Demonetization in 2016, it further boosted UPI because people don't had the cash, so ultimately online transaction is the only option. At that time, E-Wallet also made a hype but it wasn't feasible.

UPI has many advantage for both users and merchants. And further Google also introduced their UPI app Google Pay along with some local players like PhonePe and PayTm which makes UPI transaction easy not just to send money to other be it friends or a merchant but mobile recharge, Bills, insurance, etc. can be done from these apps via UPI.

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