Slashdot Mirror
India Just Flew Past Us In the Race To E-Cash (backchannel.com)
New submitter mirandakatz writes: Since India's prime minister banned 86 percent of the rupee notes in circulation last month, citizens have been waiting in hours-long lines for ATMs. But these circumstances have also created an unexpected progression: a burgeoning cashless economy. At Backchannel, Lauren Razavi explores how India is now beating many Western countries in adopting mobile payments, and how demonetization has triggered a radical shift toward reimagining India's enormous informal economy as a data-driven digital marketplace. From the report: "Before last month, Paytm, a mobile app that allows users to pay for everything from pizza to utility bills, saw steady business -- it was processing between 2.5 and 3 million transactions a day. Now, usage of the app has close to doubled. 6 million transactions a day is common; 5 million is considered a bad day. Rather than being forced to idle away time in excruciatingly long lines, 'people are proactively exploring other ways to settle payments besides cash,' says Deepak Abbot, senior vice president at Paytm. 'Now people are realizing they don't need to really line up, because merchants are starting to accept other forms of payment.' All of this has created a newfound system that practically incentives mobile payment. With so many people queuing up at banks every day -- and a lot of Indian bureaucracy to wade through in order to open a traditional bank account or line of credit -- the appeal of more convenient digital alternatives is easy to understand. According to a report in the Hindu Business Line, as many as 233 million unbanked people in India are skipping plastic and moving straight to digital transactions. 'Cash has lost its credibility and payments are no longer perceived in the same way,' says Upasana Taku, the cofounder of Indian mobile wallet company MobiKwik, which reported a 40 percent increase in downloads and a 7,000 percent increase in bank transfers since demonetization. 'There's chaos at the moment but also relief that India will now be an improved economy,' she says."
in India, anyway
That's a race I don't want to win.
The summary makes it sound like losing access to cash is a good thing, as long as it can be replaced by a number on a server in all cases. It is not.
Who's "Us"?
Cashless only seems nice until you realize that it's not really anonymous and all the ways it allows for outside control...
Apple Pay itself eclipses all of those numbers. 3 million transactions a day is nothing.
Lots of new posters lately.
Do we care if they win.
Is there a prize?
does the "e" make it better?
You cashless society morons are staring at the wreckage of India's economy and thinking "boy, this sure sounds like a great idea, I can't wait to try it!"
In general, it seems Indian voters are more likely to trust their government to not use e-cash to track them in order to take away guns and/or profiling based on ethnicity or religion to prevent attacks, deport, etc.
Republicans don't trust Democrat administrations, and Democrats don't trust Republican administrations.
Table-ized A.I.
Note that the socialist utopias are moving to e-cash.
I'll keep my dollars, thanks. No need to bother the tax man every time I buy something from a local vendor.
As long as you didn't drive to said vendor on a government-funded road under government-funded street lights using gas that was purchased from a government-inspected pump (so as to make sure that you pay for a gallon and get a gallon) then sure. Don't bother paying the same sales taxes that the rest of us pay.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Sounds like a horrible thing.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
...3....2....1
Why does BeauHD post this garbage. Who cares?
The only positive I could see coming out of this is putting the US Mint out of businesses. We still can't get those fuckers to understand that the penny is a waste of tax payer dollars.
Aside from that everything about a cashless society is a potential slippery slope to a totalitarian state.
But when I do, I prefer small, unmarked bills.
You want a revolution of poor people, eliminate fungible currency
I use bitcoin.
X pounds of Cow gets you X pounds of weed or Opium?
Digital payment to Rahj's Drug Emporium?
Because computer security and how it seems to universally suck.
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
It's not a race, it's a tool that's useful for certain economies and not others.
In India, 9 out of 10 transactions are conducted in cash. The informal economy is enormous in India, and is an economy that the government has little oversight over, and thus has little ability to collect taxes. E-Cash enables all transactions to be logged, tracked, and mined for data, which gives the government greater control over their economy.
This is about the Indian government being able to collect taxes better, pure and simple. It also helps reduce corruption and illegal transactions which is a good thing, but the main focus is taxes.
Who the fuck is "racing to e-cash"?
"Cash has lost its credibility"
To whom? Bureaucrats? Banks? The NSA?
This sounds very much like that contrived "Internet of Things" we're supposed to all need.
-Styopa
India has devalued its largest denomination bills by surprise, in an attempt to get folks in the "black economy", and this even means professionals like doctors, to account for their cash and stop avoiding taxes. Everyone has a very short time to deposit the old bills in a bank, or lose their value.
The problem with this is that because it was a surprise, India did not print new bills first, and does not have the capacity to print them at anything near the number required.
So, right now many businesses are shut down because they can't pay their employees. It seems that it was the case that these employees were paid in cash and might not be able to get bank accounts.
Their economy is going to take a hit.
Bruce Perens.
If they now devote some resources to developing their infrastructure, the rest of the world will start taking them seriously.
The dose makes the poison.
Meanwhile in the real world, it's evil capitalism that gets things done. Before the government can steal something and give it to you, it first has to be invented by someone willing to take risk or built by someone that expects to get paid.
This includes the machines that paved the road, the street lights, the gas pump, and the gasoline.
Socialist snow plows are built by capitalists.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Quite aside from the fact that this quotes "the co-founder of Indian mobile wallet company" as if his position makes him an authority rather than biased, the only real advantage presented is because the government does not want you to use cash. The government is doing this because it has more control and surveillance capacity over other forms of payment, in this case for tax reasons. These may be valid reasons but they are also double edged and dangerous the banks or apps that win the battle for market share will become real life God objects[1] seeing and knowing all transactions and required for everything, if they break or the internet fails even locally you can't even buy bread. Worse from the anti-cash perspective if you have cash already the disadvantages only apply to bank dependent transactions, and only due to a temporary artificial shortage, not simple cash transactions. Is this a "real" advantage? how is any of this a good thing?
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_object
I just wish we could get people to stop writing checks at the supermarket!
A check transaction almost inevitably goes along the lines of, "Oh, you mean i have to pay!? Let me first find my checkbook and then spend forever filling out the check, almost all of which could have been done while waiting in line or while my groceries were being checked"
Not the end of the world of course but i do have better uses for my time than waiting in line.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
I see a of of self made millionaires do that - these are your average working stiff folks who did it I er 20 years of so - not people who got rich quick in Silicon Valley.
They only use a credit card when traveling because it's a bitch to travel without one: need one for a hotel, buying plane tickets with cash means hours with TSA, DEA and other grunts, and you need one to rent a car.
Anyway, if they don't have the cash, they live without it - even cars - they buy only used cars. The only time they borrow money is for real estate.
Only with e-cash. Coming to a mineshaft gap near you.
In a race to the bottom winning is not a good thing. I wish India the best of luck but I cannot see this ending well.
There is no need to invade everyone's privacy to ensure every cent of sales tax is paid. 'Government-funded' means 'citizen-funded', you've got the power argument backwards or you've drank the kool aid that tells you citizens exist to serve government.
And yet all of those things - roads, amenities, regulatory authorities and the tax system to pay for them - all of them predate e-commerce. All of them date back to a time when account ledgers were physical books (ledgers) and cash was king. Think about that.
Here's an article from earlier today that would seem to disagree with a basic assumption of this story:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Before the government can steal something and give it to you,
You mean like how the government paid for networking research that lead to the internet? Or how they fund basic science research with grants that private companies would never do? And then the same companies just take the research and make money off of it. Brilliant innovation. Socialize the losses, privatize the gains. Yay Capitalism !
Meanwhile in the real world, it's evil capitalism that gets things done.
Said the person commenting on a SOCIAL website where people congregate under a SOCIAL contract for a COMMON goal to SOCIALLY and FREEly exchange ideas. But perhaps you're the special kind of ayn-rand-boot-licking prick who invoices their friends and peers for giving them your time.
Such a blinkered, narrow view. Did Capitalism protect those inventors from having their inventions stolen by those with more resources, or was it the socialist patent office that helped them out? For that matter, did capitalist forces keep their countries safe from invasion so they could work without concern for marauders coming over the hills to kill them and take their resources?
For the people, they should've given them more time to turn in/exchange the bills. Start the purge of the bills Jan 1. Do the same thing but stretch it out over the course of a year. Make ATMs and banks stop giving them out, have businesses first change out their cash stores. Once the rush dies down, then tell businesses to stop accepting the bills, and then Dec31 make them useless. This instant disruption seems rediculous.
Because this was a strike against the black market economy which reduces tax collections by the government, the next step after this should be to start utilizing data to prosecute those not paying sales taxes. Those switching to this approach have just taken the bait - hook, line and sinker.
The better response would have been to switch currencies (bitcoin anyone?) or go back to a barter economy. A lot of people in the US did that in the 2009 time frame to very good effect. I've known many who dropped out of the "official" job market and are now doing better than before working for a barter-heavy combination of barter and cash.
How, exactly, are they discounting all of the debit, credit card, and ACH transfers in the US?
It's trivial to get your own card reader, there are various Apple and Android payment systems, PayPal, Google Wallet...
They're cherry-picking the hell out what it means to be an "electronic" payment.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
I don't know why the media thinks a switch to newer cash technologies is a good thing. Good old cash, checks, and credit cards work pretty well. So, why the rush to replace them?
Let's see, Cobol, Ada, TCP and the Internet Protocol were all invented by the evil gubermint you so quickly denounce. The GP mentioned roads and public lighting which benefit capitalists directly. Other ideas created by the government and benefiting capitalists are police to protect their hoard of cash, courts to protect their intellectual property and public education so those noble capitalists don't have to spend 10-15 years teaching an employee reading/writing/arithmetic and how to do their job.
A poor argument for your delusion that 'greed is good'. Greed is necessary, just like government. Also like government, the power of greed over others needs to be curbed.
If you don't believe that you are tracked on other purchases you are not doing any homework. Donate to the wrong event or charity and suffer the consequences. Legally you can donate to the Political Party of your choosing, but is that action truly protected. How about donating to the wrong author, artist, public speaker, etc..? Ever see how Professors in Universities get treated when it's revealed that they are Republicans? They may not be fired directly, but you bet your ass that they are censured and ostracized. Plenty of examples for you to find if you look.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
That's a race I don't want to win.
Agreed.
There seems to be a general war on cash.
Australia is talking about getting rid of the $100 note.
Europe is limiting cash transactions.
I think there are a few reasons for this.
1- Negative Interest Rates. ie It is better to hoard cash than have it in a bank earning -ve interest.
2- Govts need more tax revenue
3- Long term globalist agenda to have a cashless society so all men can be controlled as predicted 2000 years ago in Revelations 13
16And the second beast required all people small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, 17so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark — the name of the beast or the number of its name.
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And yet all of those things - roads, amenities, regulatory authorities and the tax system to pay for them - all of them predate e-commerce. All of them date back to a time when account ledgers were physical books (ledgers) and cash was king. Think about that.
Okay, I've thought about it. What do I do now?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
In a nation of over a BILLION population, 6M is a rounding error.
Before the government can steal something and give it to you,
You mean like how the government paid for networking research that lead to the internet?
Do you remember the Internet before it was commercialized? I do. The government certainly did NOT give us "The Internet". The internet the "government gave us" was highly restricted to educational institutions and people who had lots of money to pay for connections. "Us" did not get to play in the fancy new sandbox.
If you could get a UUCP connection from someone on the internet, (or, as I had to, paid for one from PSI) you got the fun of using things like BITFTP to get stuff from the net. But "The Internet"? I WORKED at a University and didn't get internet access. That's how magnanimous the "government" was in "giving" us the internet.
Said the person commenting on a SOCIAL website where people congregate under a SOCIAL contract
Talk is cheap. Making things takes money. And there's some chatter about something called "Dice" every so often that seems intimately attached to the continued operation of this site.
Well, I've thought about it also, and I'm not sure either. How about a nice game of chess?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If you want an unbiased view on this, please don't ask just the mobile payment providers who have everything to gain by painting a rosy picture of a very bad situation in India. The markets across the country are crumbling following this idiotic decision with markets falling as much as 70% in some sectors (agriculture is an example) and 100s of 1000s of people losing their jobs as a direct result of this bone headed move by the government.
Washington Post: India just made a big mistake with its currency ban
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
The Harvard Business Review article on this is far more factual: Case study in poor policy and even poorer execution.
https://hbr.org/2016/12/indias...
This sounds more like a PR puff piece from the company involved. Let's just ignore all of the Chip and Pin or "wave your card over the machine" payments systems in the rest of the world whose transactions must dwarf by many orders of magnitude anything India can manage. Slashdot is a shadow of it's former self - most of the articles it uses are really terrible bits of journalism or pure PR puff.
Gold prices are up. Forecasts are that it will continue a gradual upward trend into 2017.
I'm not sure when you think you'll be buying low. Lower prices are not likely to happen in the long term.
But if inflammatory language excites you, then by all means, proceed.
Next should be currency that any of us are allowed to create, and which is globally usable w/o exchange rates or any of that stuff. Simple reason - as more jobs get automated (which is a good thing), fewer jobs are available to the general population. But the population can't be starved, and at the same time, the existing currency can't be rendered worthless given the people who have invested into it. So a parallel currency should be introduced which anyone can write and pay for anything - rent, car, food, et al. Also, such a thing would be an international leveler w/o things like WTO, NAFTA, TPP, et al, since people in any country can create it and pay for anything they need
People like street vendors don't carry credit card readers. But some do have smartphones, in which case, this option would work
Didn't the indian government recently subsidize mobile phones for 'all'?
http://indianexpress.com/artic...
IMO anything that can be abused by government will be... but then if 'the people' had a lick of sense, those in power wouldn't be.
The good about moving to cashless economy:
+ Fairer taxation (harder for people to do cash-in-hand work that doesn't contribute to tax). Although this mightn't be true as it might just drive a lot of people to alternatives like bitcoin.
+ Easier to track for your personal budget
The bad:
- Government can see every transaction you make (although you could still use bitcoin I guess and this would probably increase it's popularity)
- Makes your personal banking more of a hacking target
Government surveillance always gets mentioned, but a friend of mine had an even worse scenario.
Once you've got everyone using electronic payment methods, you can then prohibit them from spending money on anything they want. "You can only buy from the government or our appointed companies."
Get me fucking cash, or better yet oil. Barrels of it. Will keep it in my bedroom. You see energy is the most inflation proof thing. If you have energy you can do anything.
Meanwhile in the real world, it's evil capitalism that gets things done. Before the government can steal something and give it to you, it first has to be invented by someone willing to take risk or built by someone that expects to get paid.This includes the machines that paved the road, the street lights, the gas pump, and the gasoline.
Socialist snow plows are built by capitalists.
You seem to have a chicken or the egg problem. Without Capital you can't make "the machines that paved the road, the street lights, the gas pump"etc and without those you can't support the businesses that make Capital. The truth is that the Western nations build the infrastructure and wealth necessary to support Capitalism using truly evil Economic Systems like Colonization and Slavery
I don't know, the last time someone tried to steal one of my inventions I pinned him to a wall and punched a hole in the wall next to his head. Pretty effective. I guess that it doesn't scale up though.
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
Yep, seems like your apprehended the problem precisely... government-funded this, government-funded that, government-funded everything. Couldn't agree more.
So, you're a privatization advocate, I take it? Good idea. Eliminate bureaucrats, create real jobs, increase efficiency, direct capital where it is most needed. Sounds good!
Might makes right irrelevant.
I just had this great idea for a fabulous new technology! I'm calling it CASH. Here are its features:
Might makes right irrelevant.
I always carry a couple hundred in cash just in case, and it has come in handy. Over the summer I was waiting in line at the grocery store when their POS system decided to take a nap and stopped processing credit or debit transactions - cash only, said the cashier. This was a major Canadian grocery chain, not a mom and pop corner store. As far as I could see across several checkout lines, I was the only one with cash - everyone else had to queue up at the single ATM to withdraw money to pay for their purchases.
I get the privacy issues some people are raising here. But until the day when electronic payment systems are bullet-proof (probably long after I've shuffled off this mortal coil), I will continue to carry a wad of bills in my pocket.
"Could be worse...could be raining." Igor
http://freakonomics.com/podcas...
Interesting stuff.
The M-Pesa service from Safaricom in Kenya is way ahead. In 2015 it processed 4.1 billion transactions. The value of the transactions represented 42% of Kenya's total GDP. Kenya's population is around 45 million compared to over 1.2 billion in India.
The truth is that the "world’s most developed nations" are not even in the mobile payment race yet, because most people in these countries can get bank accounts. Mobile money solutions are getting very good traction in less developed countries where the only cash alternative for most people is to use a cellphone.
when the system has an outage, which while not common, isn't exactly unheard of, I can still buy something with cash, the kids behind the counters might have seizures having to do math in their head, but I can still pay for things without an online connection.
poo in the loo?
Not to mention the spectacular implosion of Greece in recent history. While corruption and not paying taxes wasn't the only story with Greece, when I think of another country that is developed, but had lots of the other two problems over a long period of time, finally coming back to bite them in the ass I think of Greece.
Perhaps India took a hard look at what happened in Greece and is trying some corrective measures before things get too out of hand. India doesn't have the rest of the EU or Germany to buy them out and lend them money, their only option would be devaluation of currency.
Anyway as someone (or many) has already mentioned, the corruption in India is legendary, even in government. What *IS* surprising is that they had the political balls to go through with it considering the practice is so widespread both in the public and private sectors, this can't be a very popular move.
We, The little People do not want to be in the "race" to a cashless society! There are so many negative consequences that the whole idea scares the hell out of me.
The privacy implications are creepy enough, but that's only part of it. If the government eliminates cash from the economy, we will be totally reliant on banks. If the option to withdraw & hold physical money disappears, the banks will charge us just for holding our wealth. Think 0.5% interest on your savings account sucks? How about -0.5%, or -2%? The banks will also set or increase fees for every single transaction. Want to sell something on Craigslist or say, have a yard sale? Get ready to pay the same sort of fees that merchants pay for accepting credit card transactions, and be prepared to declare the proceeds as some sort of "income" on your tax forms. You know damned well that Big Brother will have access to the whole system. Maybe they will auto-deduct the taxes every time something comes into your account and make you prove that it wasn't some sort of income or profit?
Then you have the risk that either the bank or the government could arbitrarily turn you OFF.
Or maybe we experience a prolonged power outage and ALL commerce in the affected area stops?
We absolutely do not want to go cashless.
department of energy building energy efficiency research has cost about $600m over the past 30 years and saved, on federal buildings alone about $12 billion dollars. Quite an exceptional ROI. On all buildings (partially via code, incentive, improved construction knowledge) has saved about $100 billion dollars/year as of 2015. 85% in reduced energy and 15% in reduced capital construction costs.
There are about $200 billion/yr of low hanging fruit on the table out of a possible $400b. In other words, a major major portion of our economy that affects everyone who uses a building. These low hanging fruit are cost-effective energy efficiency upgrades (air sealing, insulation, and windows) with ROI that generally exceeds long term average of S&P500 by a factor of 2 or 3 and are cash flow positive up to fairly high cost of capital. But the construction industry is foolish and building owners (including single family) do not care about operating expenses. Ergo, the market is broken because people don't use available information or have access to information to make the best decisions. The construction industry prefers the status quo and research to improve the state of things is almost entirely funded by state and federal governments for the past 30 years. In trade we get an extremely volatile industry which externalizes all of its problems on the rest of us. And we get higher costs and shittier buildings, too. What a great trade...
Your blanket assessments of market-based approaches are wrong in many economic sectors. The US building industry (to lesser extend the NA market) happens to be one of the most wasteful and expensive in existence, at least from my fairly distinguished perspective as a researcher, beaurucrat, and executive experience. Basically the US building industry is about as bad as the developing world where free markets dictate cheap, shotty construction, primarily interested in first sale. The remaining developed world has moved on, largely due to the impact of government regulation and funding. They have better buildings, more stable industry, and are able to better whether any perturbations on energy and economy because of it.
US more market approach on infrastructure (including buildings) has yielded pathetic results compared to our "more government" peers. There is nothing to dispute here. I only bring this up to see you talk in circles about how its actually a government problem and not a market problem.
The Jews in the attic test.
http://plancksconstant.org/blog1/2014/04/good_laws_and_the_jews_in_the_attic_test.html
While I don't disagree with you, a little notes:
- "on a government-funded road under government-funded street lights" - local roads are paid for by local taxes - i.e. Property taxes, not sales taxes. And property taxes are collected by simply sending the property owner a bill, not through some fee on every transaction you make.
- "government-inspected pump" if gas taxes were removed, the price of gasoline would be about 1/2 of what it is, so even if the gas station ripped you off by 10%, you'd still end up ahead. If they tried to rip you off by 50% or more, do you not think people would notice that they were now filling up their 15 gallon gas tanks, with 30 gallons of gas? The free market would take care of this.
Cash transactions provide Privacy/Security; Govt must give Gun-Licenses to Common man if it really wants a Cashless society; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Casteism
Right, but they don't all have credit card readers
fuck this E everything
I will never understand how the readers of this site don't ever take stock of these kinds of loaded headlines and realize this is meant to be a tool of brainwashing rather than information. They still reserve their critical thinking only for things they don't want to hear. Seems like something that in an evolutionary setting would get you killed. As though no one has ever heard of the concept of a trap. Nature can't stay turned on her head forever, I'll wager.
when all your tradesmen expect cash under the table I do feel that we (as tax payers) are being ripped off...
Yes, of course I have privacy concerns WRT the cashless economy but it's a balancing act.
Australia is considering dropping the $100 note for a similar reason:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/busi...
We really need to level the playing field from the top end (Apple/Google) to the bottom end (Plumber Paul/Builder Bob).
I live in Europe. I work in the financial sector. Please explain to me how Europe is limiting cash transactions.
https://www.french-property.co...
https://www.theguardian.com/wo...
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> 5 - easier for governments to crush dissent. Simply freeze the trouble
> makers accounts, and they wont even be able to afford a lawyer to challenge it.
Read up on "Operation Chokepoint" some time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Banks received orders from the US government to stop doing business with individuals and businesses "believed to be at higher risk for fraud and money laundering". Note; the victims may have all their taxes paid, and never been charged, let alone convicted, of a crime, but they go broke because they can't access banks.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user