The Ubiquity and Simplicity of Mobile Phone-Based Money Transfer in India

When you visit a different country, familiar or not, a convenience that cannot be overemphasized is the ability to conduct financial transactions easily. Thanks to the advent of digital economy in India, consumer financial transactions are surprisingly very smooth and easy in townships across India. For a visiting Non-Resident Indian (NRI) like me, this facility is particularly handy if you operate a Non-Resident Ordinary (NRO) account with an Indian Bank that helps you deal with local currency (INR, ₹).

The Government of India has facilitated the creation and adoption of Unified Payments Interface (UPI) that seems to have unleashed ubiquity and simplicity in all payment activity in India. The Government has even provided training to street vendors to accept digital payments. (Although the UPI mechanism has been in use since 2016, this is my first serious encounter of its ubiquity). The adoption of UPI has been very rapid, as can be seen by this table:

Nearly every merchant in Bangalore sports a QR code inside the merchant's premises. Some street vendors present the QR code as part of their vending decor, as can be seen in the accompanying photo, captured in Bangalore.

The simplicity has been enabled by UPI Ids, or Virtual Payment Addresses (VPA), with the following general format:

<entity>@<bank>

In general, the <bank> is an Indian Bank and the <entity> is any alphanumeric of your choice; therefore, it helps if you already have a Non-Resident Ordinary (NRO) with a local bank. There is some attempt at internationalizing the UPI system, but this post will not address internationalization. 

I hope your next visit to Bangalore will be as pleasant as mine this time😀.