Freedom from carrying cash!

In April this year, an announcement by the National Payments Corporation of India went largely unnoticed by the aam janata. It was called the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). Four months on the revolution is yet to happen, largely because of the apathy of banking institutions; only a handful of the 29 banks which agreed to provide UPI services have actually done so.

But thanks to more agile private players, push has come to shove in the cashless consumer world. Mobile digital wallets like PayTM, Ezetap and MobiKwik now have over 150 million Indian users, who make 75 million transactions a month from their phones. But this is not how most Indians send and receive money. Cash is still king for 75 per cent of all consumer transactions. Most of us still do not use these apps for two reasons. One, there is no internet connectivity in most parts of the country and two, most of us are very distrustful of shifting our money electronically.

Can anyone blame us Hardly a day passes without news of a cyber scam, or money skimming operation. Indians may book the odd movie ticket or order a biryani online — but they are not going to rush into a new paperless payments era.

You might remember that only two weeks ago on this page, we introduced a phone with a secure finger print scanner and another with an iris scanner — each in its way a good way to secure your phone. I have just seen a phone which does both — such are the shifting goalposts of innovation! The new avatar of the Samsung flagship phone, Galaxy Note 7, has come to India only days after its global launch. It claims to be the most secure smartphone ever launched. You can choose to customise the phone with your finger print, or by a scan of your iris which is impossible to duplicate.

The Note 7 has some other enhancements, like it supports 38 languages, of which 11 are Indian, the 5.7 inch screen is a quad HD display, and comes with High Dynamic Range (HDR) feature. You can store 64 GB on the phone, expandable by another 256 GB.

With Aadhaar poised to be the de facto citizen ID for a host of payments, the ability to identify oneself from one’s own phone will be the killer app of the near future.

So what’s stopping us all from buying this phone Two things: first, very few banks support UPI. And second, Samsung Galaxy Note 7 costs Rs 59,900, not quite the phone of the masses. But India is currently the world’s biggest mobile phone bazaar and market forces may push down prices.

Meanwhile, we need to be safe rather than sorry, when shifting paisa on phone platforms. Jaagte Raho!