Topic: BTC VS UPI ? (Read 427 times)

In India UPI is more used term rather than BTC. People trust UPI over btc for now. And also it has no(slight) charge. So if you have to transfer fund to someone you just need his/her mobile number and the app like phoneppe Paytm will do the rest of the work. UPI option is easy for Indian people because this is the transition face of Digital India, now we are adopting the online banking system (UPI,NEFT,IMPS).  I think in near future or in 1-2 year we can see people transfer their fund via btc. Although UPI have some problems like you can't transfer a huge amount via UPI but their are other options like NEFT. People wants security which is given by UPI because it is controlled by Central banking system and BTC is decentralised that's why people are hesitating to use BTC. Also BTC fees are also a problem to using BTC transaction. So for now in India UPI>BTC. Hope in 1-2 years it will UPI=BTC

UPI and Btc transactions are not the same. Though a common man sees both as a digital transition but the idea behind both transaction are completely different. UPI transaction is the transfer of Fiat money from one account to other, in which banks and govt are mediators. Govt has a record of all your transaction and you have to pay taxes and other charges as defined by the central authorities.
Whereas Bitcoin is a decentralized currency with no authority can control your funds. The idea of BTC was never as investment asset but a decentralized currency against a fiat currency system. I will prefer BTC transaction over fiat to transfer my funds, but today in India only a few people understand BTC and accept it as payment.

At least law can help if the amount is huge in UPI and there's a possibility of recovery but not in the case of BTC.
BTC transaction is going to be anonymous if somehow hacker gets access to your funds which is less likely to happen if your wallet is well protected.

Hardly any funds got recovered if they send it to wrong UPI or someone used sim swapping and stole the funds in the bank account.

there is no comparison between UPI and BTC but both have there own pros and cons.
UPI is the medium that is used for small payment which required a centralized banking system. where you can only make payment in your country and there is a certain limit you can send some limited payment over 24hours.
UPI is useful for paying utility bills and other micropayments and UPI is free till now there is no cost on the transaction.
in India mostly reputed brand apps like amazon, jio pay , paytm, googlepay and mobiwiki will allow UPI In there platform and give decent cashback and discount when you use UPI to make payment.
BTC is a decentralized network there is no mediator like a bank to verify and sign the transaction blockchain will do all and it is very cheap to transfer funds from one country to another. and the cost of the transaction is much lower as compared to bank transfer. and BTC transaction is much secure than a bank because you have full control of your funds.
but there is one cons you can not retrieve your funds if you accidently sent it in to wrong address.

why UPI it is only for a centralized banking system where your security and your money is not much safe because you don't have proper control there is third party bank who can control your fund and add daily withdrawal limits in your daily money withdrawal.

on the other side in Bitcoin, you can store your bitcoin my cold wallet or hardware wallet where you have access to the private keys. only you have the authority to sent receive your funds. No third party can control your funds. There is no or some restrictions to withdrawal limit depending on the exchange which you use for withdrawal.

Basically they need location access to have better user experience on most of the google applications but here they made it as mandatory for some reasons.

I doubt it. I think they just want to collect location info to 'improve' their products.

Maybe for your security because we all know it is much easier to hack bank accounts in India so people who are sending money by using VPN to hide their identity may get blocked due to often change in the location.

I hate how Google pay asks to turn on location just to pay a bill or make a transfer.

As TheUltraElite pointed out, we have both pros and cons associated with the usage of both UPI and Bitcoin in our country. But for the past few years, UPI has taken over bitcoin and has suppressed it to an extent such that there aren't really good debates going in favor of bitcoin. But the adoption of either Bitcoin or a payment system like UPI completely lies with the developers and consideration of bitcoin as a currency rather than a trading scheme. The two major problems associated with Bitcoin is the volatility and scalability. While we can get rid of scalability through LN, volatility poses a greater threat in a country like India. Here each $ is equivalent to 75 INR and a slight change in the price of BTC/USD will have a larger pump or dump in our currency.

What if a car worth INR 7,00,000 ~ 1BTC today is worth INR 6,00,000 tomorrow if BTC prices dumps to $8,000 overnight from the current $9,200? That's a loss for the seller if they didn't convert BTC to INR as soon as possible. For the past couple of years, I have been using over 3-4 modes of payment starting from physical currency, netbanking, debit/credit cards and of course bitcoin(over the recent 2 years). Up until last week, I never had a situation to pay through UPI and certainly I was forced to use UPI for the transfer of money to a seller from ebay. I wouldn't always trust my mobile and never had any confidential/private information stored through them for all these years and I hate having one as well. It would obviously become a headache when we lose our mobile or if our BHIM datas were compromised as it happened this year.

But as a new user, it was quite attractive for me to use and well you can have a dedicated bank account with lower balances for UPI to prevent loss of funds. Even today, bitcoin is the safest and cheapest mode of transfer of funds globally and I would surely bet on that. I do a couple of international transfers (both fiat and btc) each year and the all I can say I never found a international medium of exchange as cheaper as btc till now. For international transfers, bitcoin would always lead the way while for national transfers UPI would always lead the way.

Undoubtedly true. I attended a seminar with some company where they clearly demonstrated. How banks themselves are involved in analysing your statement and determination of a person's spending habit. Accordingly they create sort of an algorithm on basis on credits and debits to depict whether such person will face liquidity crunch in near future and this data is then sent to their lending arms who package their products specifically for you so that their turnover rate increases manifold. No doubt this is ethically wrong.

Ps: I always get better luck next time when I transact with you. I guess You are the bad luck.

Yeah! Giving away data related to my spending habits for 'scratch cards' so that apps like PhonePe or Google Pay can make bucks by selling that to companies like Amazon or Flipkart is surely not a bad idea. Not to forget that you get 'Better Luck Next Time' in 9 out of 10 cases.

Note: For UPI-based payment apps like PhonePe, data mining based on their customers spending habits is the most prominent source of earning. Companies like Amazon and Flipkart are ready to pay millions in order to target right customer base for their products. This is not illegal as data collected by payment apps don't include private information but still it's morally wrong.

India could partner with stellar, that crypto is top notch, cross-border transactions at negligible costs, easily convert from one fiat to another. Rather than Bitcoin, i think stellar could do very well.

Yet both of these modes are not at all comparable. Yet as a layman for transferring money I still think UPI makes much more sense If you are not involved in cross border transaction. One is because of No fees altogether. UPI is a well sought arrangement by our country for free transaction over various banks. And this has made the system obviously more centralized. Now apart from a upper limit it's a pretty good mechanism. Even the major problems or hacking that have occured were due to user's not being tech savvy https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thequint.com/amp/story/tech-and-auto%252Ftech-news%252Fmobile-upi-apps-bank-fraud-robber-user-prevent-money-loss this is based ona report by someone on security analysis of UPI. I think if these population isn't vigilant enough to use UPI safely it's hard to expect that they would use Bitcoin without any problems. Moreover transduction times and cost obviously remain the problem always. I am heaing of LN since 3 years but haven't seen any major implementation of it as of yet.

Yet again I would say it's not that wise to compare both. Yes I have heard government using blockchain to empower UPI further. So I think UPI would definitely take a lead here.

PS: Google pay scratch cards are a plus too you don't get that in Bitcoin

LoL! Man! You are continuously teasing me with two of my dreams.

Number 1 :: Purchasing assets like Cars with Bitcoin. BTC
Number 2 :: Purchasing Lambo. 

I hope both come true in near future. 

Lol! In that case, Enforcement Directorate will come knocking my door and I will be in prison within shortest time possible! No! Free money is haram even in Hinduism!


True! So there's a light at the end if the tunnel. But lots of IFs and BUTs are there. LN will definitely increase the efficiency of bitcoin and may help in increasing the adoption among merchants. But I am now worried about the new draft legislation against cryptos in India. If it becomes reality, we are doomed to certain extent!

Both have their Pros and Cons. Depending on the situation one can be better or worse than the other. The point is that the problem in question is not about UPI, rather it denotes Fiat vs Bitcoin age-old debate.

Still a bit early to say that, but I like your optimism.

But if you have time at hand and thinking of buying a lambo like @webtricks did, you might prefer doing a method that allows unlimited volume of money to be transferred without any hassle.

LN will improve a lot of the merchant acceptance of bitcoin. We will see better and useful changes in bitcoin payment system them. So I am hopeful of it in the future of our economy.

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Webtricks buying lambos joke is getting old, isnt it?

Even if bitcoin is legalised in India, I will still prefer UPI for regular transactions because of its speed, convenience and acceptability. Also UPI transactions are free so if I compare between UPI and bitcoin, the winner is UPI for me!

In India, bitcoin is mainly used as an investment or trading instrument, but not as a payment method due to its transaction processing time and fees. It's convenient to use a bitcoin prepaid card though but that's not an actual use of bitcoin. Unless and until LN becomes widely known and used, bitcoin is a bad choice of payment method.

Correct me if I am wrong!

Introduction of UPI bring huge revolution in Indian online payment system that is why we can able to pay everything in single tap but before the introduction of UPI it will take lot of time and effort.But it is something only for smaller payments and also as I said earlier lot of UPI frauds are happening in India.Currently we can't use BTC to buy anything in India so its not worth comparing right now.

This is a partially biased statement, biased by the fact that we are in a cryptocurrency forum and people here use it more than anyone else.

You see, UPI is something that our country has itself used it own developers to build and develop over time. It is an indigenous creation and thus supporting it would be to support our country even if it is full of bugs at this point. It will get better.

Not that I mean that bitcoin is bad, but that both have their own pros and cons and are not comparable. Just because the government is not willing to allow trading freely here does not mean that it will always be like that.

Blockchain tech is something new but not necessarily a future. Lets be honest here. We know development is going on by financial institutions in the country based on blockchain tech but it has been hyped more in 2017-2018 when the ICO boom occurred than anywhere now. I would rather take that last statement of yours with a grain of salt.

I don't really want to compare BTC with UPI. UPI is backed up by banks hence by RBI. But no such big organizations are going to promote BTC. It is totally the choice of our citizens. It will be better if they started to choose cryptocurrency over UPI. Because blockchain is the future and who will adopt the new technologies first they will be the big gainer.

This making of this thread is a joke at the most, but I appreciate the effort anyway.

UPI and Bitcoin are completely different things. UPI is an interface for fiat transfers, compare it with other payment methods like Visa, Mastercard. It has been adopted on many apps like stated above.

Bitcoin is a decentralized currency without any bank controlling it.

UPI is good for smaller volume payments, like paying the grocery shop, sending gifts to friends and family and so on. It has limits and defenitely not the way to go for buying a lambo(Pun intended) like @webtricks did

Also the BHIM app is pretty buggy in my experience but it is still usable.

UPI is a well-thought but poorly implemented mechanism in Indian Banking Sector. They say UPI is cross-banking service which is centrally managed but each bank exerts high degree of authority on how its customers use UPI. If a bank wants then your transaction can be declined even if you had enough balance. Then comes limits and here things get more dirty! You can only do 10 transactions and transaction size has to be below ₹1,00,000 which makes UPI unsuitable for many operations.

Few months ago I was purchasing a car. Before that I didn't use UPI for big transactions and had no idea about UPI limits so I went to the seller's place with the plan of paying money through UPI. When I tried sending full amount, I got the error of transaction size. Hence I was only able to transfer ₹1,00,000 to him via UPI. Then I tried to send rest of the amount through internet banking so I added him as a beneficiary. As per bank rules, we have to wait for 30 minutes after adding beneficiary before we can transfer the amount. So I waited for 30 minutes there and then tried to send the rest of the amount and here came another bump. As per bank rules, you can't transfer amount more than ₹75,000 through IMPS within first 24 hours after adding new beneficiary. Then I went to my bank branch (which was another 20KM journey), did RTGS for the rest of the amount. Drove 20KM back again and collected the car.


After reading above what do you think I would prefer? Of course, Bitcoin! Bitcoin gives you the full control on the money you own. You don't have to suffer and waste time to use your own money due to some stringent bank rules. You can use your money whenever and wherever you want, no matter the amount, no matter the number of times and that is the biggest advantage of Bitcoin over traditional banking system.

Traditional bank transfers were indeed a pain in the ass. It used to take a while for the bank transfer to happen since we needed to add the beneficiary first and then wait for it to be approved and then initiate a transfer. But as technology has advanced this process has also been advanced and now it doesn't take much time to do the traditional bank transfer as well.

Talking about UPIs, it's not the safest way to transfer money to other banks as well since we have had incidents in the past where hackers had stolen the UPI keys and used it to transfer money to their accounts. Besides that, it still involves a third party. But still people use it on a day to day basis because of it's convenience. We can say UPIs are best for daily transactions.

Bitcoin on the other hand is safest way to transfer money to the other person in my opinion unless you don't commit a mistake yourself.
Obviously bitcoin is not yet feasible for micro transactions but the lightning network can be used to solve the issue of micro transactions once it is well established. Bitcoin can still be used to make transactions online and in my perspective bitcoin is the best mode of payment for peer to peer transactions without involving a third party.

If UPI is so good as you say then why the UPI transaction has limits per day?

Imagine you want to send few lakhs to someone then its not possible via UPI,so its just for small transaction.

And also mention about UPI frauds, hundreds of people were losing their money due to UPI system since it is easier to sim swap in India.

75% of article, upi good, last 25%, experts believe BTC bad 

WHY UPI BECAME POPULAR IN INDIA?

UPI is a merger platform which merges and collects  almost all the banking services of India in one app.

It's easy to use because we just need the UPI ID and pin to send and receive amount.
We can perform Real-time bank-to-bank transfer services by just using your phone number or unique ID.


WHO CONTROLS UPI?

UPI is under NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India) , RBI and IBA ( Indian Banks Association) which are the trusted organizations of India.
 These platforms interconnects all the banks for fund transfer services.

WHY UPI?

Before the UPI services launched in India the process of fund transfer was very hectic and difficult.
People were unable to trust third party apps for fund transfers therefore they preferred either to stand in long queues of banks or do it via Internet Banking which was done very rarely (if compared to bank users) because it was very complex and time taking.
 
But after the commencement of cheap internet in India (THANKS TO JIO SERVICES) and government supporting online transactions , the users and UPI apps increased very rapidly which made bank fund transfers very easy and convenient.
Earlier before UPI was introduced . I was the only one in my house who use to transfer amount via net banking . But after UPI came my father used to send me my college fee and pocket money directly via Gpay , BHIM , PhonePE which made his work very easy.
He now started doing TV recharges and pay electricity bills by his own just after these apps were introduced as they are very easy to use and safe too.

There was another reason he started trusting online mode of payment because government also promoted online cashless transactions to avoid corruption in our nation.
As per report around Rs.8,000 crore worth transactions are being made every day via UPI Transfer.

WHAT IS BITCOIN NOT PREFERRED OVER UPI AS A MODE OF TRANSACTION IN INDIA YET ?

Digital currency is upcoming future of world but it's not yet recognized in India.
Indian experts claims that UPI mode is the most advanced and safe platform for payment and they don't need bitcoins as a mode of exchange.
They also predicts that it will increase new form of corruption in India .

What is your opinion  ? What will you prefer if BTC will become a legal mode of transaction ?
Share your views.