Not nearly as convenient. Do you use Interac to pay for a $1.50 coffee regularly straight from your phone? Send money to a friend without needing to exchange emails/phone/passwords? Be completely fee-less no matter what bank you use? Not require "acceptance" on the other end? Be notified and require approval before a merchant can debit your account? From what I understand, UPI has all of these things and Interac does not.
UPI is not free and people should really stop parroting that talking point. It is free, FOR NOW.
There are plans in place to charge a 1.1% fee for transactions to merchants. The indian government claims that there will be savings via banks handling less cash but it provided exactly zero in the way of calculations, estimates or data. In 2022, the indian digital payment industry expected a net loss of around 60 million USD.
Nah, For a system similar to Interac they have NEFT, RTGS and IMPS which are bank acc to bank acc transfer. UPI requires bank account but you need UPI id to transfer the fund.
> UPI requires bank account but you need UPI id to transfer the fund.
UPI requires a bank account, a mobile phone number linked to the bank account and a smartphone to transfer funds for anything other than a trivially small payment (tiny payments are now supported on feature phones).
