Am I crazy here? If you're buying a device, why not buy an EFTPOS (credit card/touch pay) machine that facilitates the transaction?
Is Google/Apple Pay not prevelant in India? Given they're paying by their phone, surely it is?
I feel like I'm missing something here, this method seems more complex than the now standard "tap your phone on the machine" in my country. The banks give them out for free or a small fee (they take a fee per transaction) or the vendors use a third party like Square.
The reason could because of how these payments apps evolved.
People already had cheap android phones in their hand. After the 4g boom, many got their first smartphone.
UPI related playment apps started with QR code scanning, just like in China.
There is no extra cost to the vendor. All they need is a sticker with their QR, which customers can scan. Later, they came up with a (bluetooth) speaker which can announce payments. It doesn't even need a connected smartphone.
If they used cards, they need to manufacture it and the readers. Ship them to their home addresses (which is complicated and lossy), train them about card usage.
For many vendors who accepted UPI payments, it was their first time accepting something other than cash as payments.
The tap & pay model is an extension of payment using credit cards which has been the preferred payment method in the west for decades. On the other hand, credit cards never caught on in India, specially among the middle and lower middle class folks which is a large chunk of the population. So while the west underwent evolution from paper currency to credit cards to digital payments, India skipped the credit card generation and went straight for digital payments thanks to cheap android phones and free/subsidized/cheap 3G/4G data costs.
Is Google/Apple Pay not prevelant in India? Given they're paying by their phone, surely it is?
I feel like I'm missing something here, this method seems more complex than the now standard "tap your phone on the machine" in my country. The banks give them out for free or a small fee (they take a fee per transaction) or the vendors use a third party like Square.