Why can’t India offer UPI digital currency system to Russia whereas China has already offered its digital currency systems to Russia? What are the barriers stopping India?*
Many years ago, UPI was offered to over 100 countries. Not a single one has bought it so far.
Over 100 countries showed interest in UPI in 2016. 5 years later, not one has bought it.
Gentle reminder that interest is not action.
Purchase journey goes thru' Awareness-Interest-Desire-Action stages. 97.5% of people who show interest don't buy. #AIDA pic.twitter.com/Y2SKxBsi4W— Ketharaman Swaminathan (@s_ketharaman) October 19, 2021
When they were using Visa / MasterCard credit cards, Russians were getting rewards, deferred payment, fraud protection and other benefits of credit card.
With V / MC now pulling out of Russia, Russians will continue to get those benefits by switching to credit cards from China Union Pay.
Why would they want UPI, where they don’t get these benefits?
That said, India can offer RuPay credit card network, which is a substitute for Visa / MasterCard / China UnionPay. In How RuPay Can Disrupt Visa And MasterCard, I’d provided a playbook for RuPay to expand all over the world.
JFYI:
- China Union Pay is a credit card network, not a digital currency.
- UPI is an Account-to-Account based digital payment method, not a digital currency.
- UPI is not a substitute for Visa / MasterCard / China UnionPay. (RuPay is)
There’s no harm shilling your products but remember that people judge a book by its cover. It helps to demonstrate domain expertise by getting the basic things right. Otherwise, the whole world will see the uninformed takes of one or two people on a public platform and attribute it to your entire country. When that happens, it will undermine the efforts of your compatriots who are trying to sell the same products worldwide.
This is especially important in international marketing where racists and jingoists will pounce on the slightest opportunity to reject products from third world countries.
*: This is the original question I answered. I’m repeating it to help me make sense of my answer in case it’s moved to / merged with some other question that I didn’t answer.