India - The World Leader in Digital Payments

Digital Onions ?

Early yesterday morning, we heard an Onion pushcart vendor call out saying 5 kgs of Onions were being sold for Rs. 100.

As onions are a staple at home, Amma went out to buy from this young vendor. I took Rs. 50 and went out as we wanted 2.5 kgs instead of 5 kgs. Amma selected the onions.

Once she had made the purchase, and moved I saw the QR code on the side of the vendor’s pushcart. I immediately went inside and got my phone so that I could pay using BHIM. And the vendor tried to push another 2.5 kgs telling me it was Rs. 50 for 2.5 kgs if paid in cash. His Hindi dialect was certainly from U.P and I asked him where he was from.

Dinesh, the pushcart Onion vendor is from Kanpur and there are 30 to 40 of his fellow Kanpuri brothers who have come all the way to Hyderabad to make a living. They have been here for almost a decade and can speak Telugu !! How enterprising.

India Digital — Dinesh, the pushcart Onion vendor with a QR code to accept digital payments

We have been paying for Milk, Sugarcane juice and even vegetables through BHIM or GPay. Haven’t been asked for cash at all.

All through our drive to Hyderabad, FASTag worked at every toll plaza. We would usually carry small change when we did these road trips before, but now its all digital payments.

Just today Krishnan came across this fantastic article on Business Insider – Four charts to show how India’s digital payments ecosystem has evolved in the last one year.