Did you know that India clocks 41.7 crore UPI transactions per day!! The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) was launched in India on April 11, 2016, by Dr. Raghuram G Rajan, Governor, of RBI in Mumbai. Just 8 years ago. This must be the fastest product diffusion in the world.
India must be the only country in the world where you can just carry a mobile phone and happily live without having any money in your pocket. From the humble beggar to buying air tickets all the transactions are on the UPI.
Recently at the India-England cricket test match at Hyderabad, I was stunned to see the plight of English fans. Many vendors were not accepting credit and debit cards. They were also refusing to accept large currency notes like the 500 and the 2000 rupee notes. Everyone wants UPI payments, but English fans lack the magic - the UPI interface.
Behind every problem lies an opportunity for a product or a service. UPI payments were a great advantage to the customer but were a disadvantage to small businessmen who have many small ticket transactions.
For example, a small tea stall owner might have as many as 10 to 15 transactions in as much time. Mostly managed by a single individual, there was an additional stress of making tea, serving it, taking cash, and checking the mobile to see if the payment was received.
Pay TM, Google Pay, Phone Pay, and other UPI payment gateway providers came out with a wonderful product innovation. A simple sound box. The sound box has a QR code that can be scanned.
Once it is scanned the payment gets transferred to the seller and an audio message comes out "Received payment of Rupees 10". This relieved the stress of watching the mobile to see if the payment was received. Sold at a very affordable cost with a monthly rental of Rs 149/- sound boxes quickly found market acceptance.
Marketers wanted to up the ante. Now they are toying with the idea of introducing advertisements after every 10 transactions. There is a huge space for product promotions that can be customized and localized. For example, in Miyapur all the ads can be for the business establishments in and around Miyapur.
Great Idea. It could be a win-win for both the sound box provider and the vendor. The sound box provider can make money and share it with the vendor. The vendor need not pay any rental and could get some additional revenue. But I suspect the person who might find it irritating is you and me the poor customers.
Let us assume that a single ad will play after every ten transactions. This would irk the 11th customer as he was to wait for 10/20/30 seconds for his UPI transaction. You might say that 10/20/30 seconds is not long. I suggest you try to hold your breath. 10 seconds is a lot of time!!!
The ambiance of the store too might be disturbed by the inane advertisements. Also for high-volume vendors like tea shops, there could be advertisements coming in thick and fast adding to the chaos and confusion. Anyway, it is early days and let us wait and see how this new media evolves and adapts to the market scenario.
