So there is a twitter war going around – not between any parties, but by a bunch of payment company founders who have an issue with WhatsApp UPI experience.
To be clear, WhatsApp UPI experience is AMAZING and is as simplistic as it can get (though the flow is debatable when it comes to VPA payment)
After failing to win war against India’s open internet with cheap tricks of free basics, Facebook is again in play.
Killing beautiful open UPI system with its custom close garden implementation.
I am surprised, champions of open @India_Stack , let it happen ! https://t.co/wIsNuF1AiB— Vijay Shekhar (@vijayshekhar) February 14, 2018
Microsoft did this to open web standards. WhatsApp is doing this to UPI, openly in front of everyone :: https://t.co/liXPGYhinm https://t.co/G6NmjG6dft
— Vijay Shekhar (@vijayshekhar) February 14, 2018
The basic problem Vijay has is that WhatsApp bypasses some of the core features of UPI which are mandated and that translates to Facebook being favored by UPI.
Fair enough. There are couple of interesting threads on this topic which will help you build your own theory on the topic.
Those complaining abt Whatsapp are the same folks who refuse to entertain neutral payment options(like @MobiKwik )on their own ecom websites/apps and instead promote only captive wallets. A standard of interoperability should incl wallet acceptance as well 2/n
— Bipin Preet Singh (@BipinSingh) February 14, 2018
A lot of talk about Whatsapp interoperability just wanted to clarify my thoughts:
1. Any bank account to Any bank account ??
2. Any bank account to Any VPA ??
3. Feature to scan a UPI QR (Not Yet)
4. Feature to accept collect request (Not Yet)— Nikhil Kumar (@nikhilkumarks) February 14, 2018
Yes – when you do it it’s #strategic Lever but when #Competition does it , it’s unfair advantage , not a level playing field … @cnha https://t.co/yUF1o46WIX
— K.Ganesh (@ganeshk03) February 14, 2018
Where were you when banks collaborated to keep wallets out of UPI? Becoming a bank…
UPI was never open. Access was given preferentially to select few, to exclusion of others.
Facebook is stupid to depend on system owned and controlled by banks. https://t.co/BWwX2YVnOs
— Nikhil Pahwa (@nixxin) February 14, 2018
We can debate this for the next 10 days/weeks and go nowhere. But, here is a question which I have for most companies.
Every company had 1 year to win..
so what were you doing?
WhatsApp payment was announced in April of 2017 and every company had a year to acquire users / build more useful features.
I don’t know much about other wallet services, but here is what Paytm launched : Paytm Inbox / messaging (the P2P messaging feature which you are I aren’t using).
That is, to beat WhatsApp, they tried becoming more like WhatsApp. Seriously.
And not focus on SMEs (where is Paytm’s lending service) or even consumer loyalty (question: guess the transaction fall after flight discounts have been taken off ?).
I won’t comment on the policy part (mainly because I don’t have access to NPCI/UPI and the innerworkings), but here is what I know.
If companies focus on customers and keep solving for their current (and evolving needs), customers won’t replace them with other tools.
Talking about payment services, I believe Instamojo has done a much better job by staying focused on SMEs and helping them with payment collection; and PhonePe which has built a great experience and is rolling out its PoS/calculator (PS: they are trying hard / thinking about the end user and will hopefully win a lot of them).
Your thoughts?
For now, I leave you with this pic.
