Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],

Look to the past to crack the future—that’s what UPI, India’s biggest fintech success story, seems to be doing. In this edition, Arundhati tells us why. As for Anand, he has some thoughts on the differential treatment meted out to international investors. Closed for some, wide open for others. Where’s the logic, he wonders. 

UPI’s future depends on travelling back to the past

Five years ago when India launched its digital payments system for smartphones—the Unified Payments Interface (UPI)—it was an iconoclastic piece of technology, far ahead of its time. You only have to skim this piece I wrote in Ka-Ching! last October to realise just how many countries have followed suit. 

UPI was launched at a time when the number of smartphones in India was lower than the number of feature phones, as were smartphone sales. In 2016, the year UPI was launched, India saw 109 million smartphones shipped, while this number was 136 million for feature phones. 

It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that a system was devised for using UPI on feature phones too—via the National Unified USSD Platform.