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Tired of the Misinformation - India Is Innovating! - #AadharPay

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I recently came across a tweet that genuinely made my blood boil — people with zero clue are out there defaming our country, India, calling it a tech laggard compared to China.

Yes, China may currently have more commercialized biometric payment solutions — but let’s get the facts straight. India already has the foundation in place. Ever heard of Aadhaar Pay? It allows users to make payments using fingerprints as biometric authentication. The infrastructure exists. It’s just not fully commercialized yet due to a mix of policy, hardware costs, and awareness issues.

Coming from a tech background myself, I can confidently say: that building a biometric payment system backed by Aadhaar Pay would take barely a week to prototype. The real challenge? Hardware. Biometric scanners — whether for fingerprints or retina — aren’t free. That adds to the Merchant Discount Rate (MDR), which most merchants hesitate to bear, and in turn, the cost gets passed on to customers.


Let’s be real — we’re still struggling to accept convenience fees on UPI. Until we tackle that mindset and infrastructure challenges, reaching a "China-like" biometric payment adoption will remain aspirational.

But make no mistake — India is not far behind. We just need to wake up and support the tech that’s already here.

References: Aadhar Pay, Aadhar enabled Payment System



If you are amazed by this, please rate me by clicking my profile pic on the left. "It doesn't matter but we are still living in a competitive world."
raghumahajan
 
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Don't overreact and accept the fact that we are fucked. Govt had already spent over a billion $ in aadhar itself without any major benefit.

You can prototype in a week but to scale that to millions like china did isn't something india can do overnight. Indian has its own bottlenecks to tech when its connected in someway or other to govt.
 
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Arre, don't extrapolate some random guy's post on X and think it speaks for the general public . Musk has made that platform a mess, and we have all kinds of idiots spouting nonsense because one can earn money using a blue tick. 🙄

Nobody wants a biometric payment system in India to become common place, definitely not in a low-trust society like ours where scams are routine.
 
Agreed.
Imagine scams popping up everywhere in malls, bus/railway stations or in other public places, where someone accidentally takes your finger print. Or better place is an ATM where you use your fingers to press the buttons.
Literally no one wants finger-print payments. Instant NFC/Tap and Pay is enough.
soccer said:
Arre, don't extrapolate some random guy's post on X and think it speaks for the general public . Musk has made that platform a mess, and we have all kinds of idiots sprouting nonsense because one can earn money using a blue tick. 🙄

Nobody wants a biometric payment system in India to become common place, definitely not in a low-trust society like ours where scams are routine.
Click to expand...
 
soccer said:
Arre, don't extrapolate some random guy's post on X and think it speaks for the general public . Musk has made that platform a mess, and we have all kinds of idiots spouting nonsense because one can earn money using a blue tick. 🙄

Nobody wants a biometric payment system in India to become common place, definitely not in a low-trust society like ours where scams are routine.
Click to expand...
My intention is to educate people about this technology.
Technologiaaaa 😂
 
raghumahajan said:
I recently came across a tweet that genuinely made my blood boil — people with zero clue are out there defaming our country, India, calling it a tech laggard compared to China.

Yes, China may currently have more commercialized biometric payment solutions — but let’s get the facts straight. India already has the foundation in place. Ever heard of Aadhaar Pay? It allows users to make payments using fingerprints as biometric authentication. The infrastructure exists. It’s just not fully commercialized yet due to a mix of policy, hardware costs, and awareness issues.

Coming from a tech background myself, I can confidently say: that building a biometric payment system backed by Aadhaar Pay would take barely a week to prototype. The real challenge? Hardware. Biometric scanners — whether for fingerprints or retina — aren’t free. That adds to the Merchant Discount Rate (MDR), which most merchants hesitate to bear, and in turn, the cost gets passed on to customers.


Let’s be real — we’re still struggling to accept convenience fees on UPI. Until we tackle that mindset and infrastructure challenges, reaching a "China-like" biometric payment adoption will remain aspirational.

But make no mistake — India is not far behind. We just need to wake up and support the tech that’s already here.

References: Aadhar Pay, Aadhar enabled Payment System



If you are amazed by this, please rate me by clicking my profile pic on the left. "It doesn't matter but we are still living in a competitive world."
raghumahajan
Click to expand...

Frankly, the debate isn’t about whether India has the technical capability — we absolutely do. The real question is whether something like palm-scan-based payments is even practical or secure for a country like ours.

In the video, the person simply scans his palm and the payment is done — no ID, no device, no second-layer verification. Now picture that in India, where scams evolve faster than the RBI can issue guidelines. Imagine someone lifting your palm print from a glass surface, or worse, straight-up physical crime. Once your biometric is compromised, you can't change it. There's no "reset" like a password.

Also, even UPI is exploited daily through social engineering, fake apps, QR code frauds, and plain old human error despite having device binding + PIN protection. If people can be tricked even when there's a visible confirmation step, removing that step entirely is only going to make fraud easier. Now add biometric payments to that — irreversible, non-replaceable, and unique to each human. Once compromised, you can't change your fingerprint or palm. What then?

And let’s not pretend this is hypothetical — we already have real examples. Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AePS) scams are happening across India, where fraudsters exploit leaked biometric data or misuse fingerprints to drain bank accounts, often before the victim even realizes what happened. Once your biometric data is compromised, there’s no “reset.” You can’t change your fingerprint or your palm like you change a password.

Also, we have to consider the low-trust environment in India. Whether it’s payments, identity, or even document verification, there’s a deeply rooted skepticism here — and for good reason. Law enforcement isn’t always quick or tech-savvy enough to handle such cases before serious damage is done.

Without a second-factor authentication — like a PIN, passcode, or device-based approval — such systems are just begging to be abused. China might manage because of their highly centralized surveillance and policing, but here it would be a security disaster waiting to happen.

Innovation is great, but we don’t need to copy China blindly. India’s payment systems have done wonders with UPI and Aadhaar-linked payments — but security has to grow with the tech, not be an afterthought.
 
In india duplicate fingerprints are common, sim activation guys use jugaad fingerprint of some other agent to activate sim here people are conned using cloning finger prints
India is heaven for scammers and fraudsters everyday gullible people lose crores of rupees fraudster enjoy free money and cyber crime police blocks innocent recipient's accounts complete lawlessness and bullshit rules to fleece common man
 
CosmicCat said:
Frankly, the debate isn’t about whether India has the technical capability — we absolutely do. The real question is whether something like palm-scan-based payments is even practical or secure for a country like ours.

In the video, the person simply scans his palm and the payment is done — no ID, no device, no second-layer verification. Now picture that in India, where scams evolve faster than the RBI can issue guidelines. Imagine someone lifting your palm print from a glass surface, or worse, straight-up physical crime. Once your biometric is compromised, you can't change it. There's no "reset" like a password.

Also, even UPI is exploited daily through social engineering, fake apps, QR code frauds, and plain old human error despite having device binding + PIN protection. If people can be tricked even when there's a visible confirmation step, removing that step entirely is only going to make fraud easier. Now add biometric payments to that — irreversible, non-replaceable, and unique to each human. Once compromised, you can't change your fingerprint or palm. What then?

And let’s not pretend this is hypothetical — we already have real examples. Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AePS) scams are happening across India, where fraudsters exploit leaked biometric data or misuse fingerprints to drain bank accounts, often before the victim even realizes what happened. Once your biometric data is compromised, there’s no “reset.” You can’t change your fingerprint or your palm like you change a password.

Also, we have to consider the low-trust environment in India. Whether it’s payments, identity, or even document verification, there’s a deeply rooted skepticism here — and for good reason. Law enforcement isn’t always quick or tech-savvy enough to handle such cases before serious damage is done.

Without a second-factor authentication — like a PIN, passcode, or device-based approval — such systems are just begging to be abused. China might manage because of their highly centralized surveillance and policing, but here it would be a security disaster waiting to happen.

Innovation is great, but we don’t need to copy China blindly. India’s payment systems have done wonders with UPI and Aadhaar-linked payments — but security has to grow with the tech, not be an afterthought.
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Even there was news of Fingerprints exploited from Govt. Revenue Department to withdraw money through AEPS.
 
raghumahajan said:
I recently came across a tweet that genuinely made my blood boil — people with zero clue are out there defaming our country, India, calling it a tech laggard compared to China.

Yes, China may currently have more commercialized biometric payment solutions — but let’s get the facts straight. India already has the foundation in place. Ever heard of Aadhaar Pay? It allows users to make payments using fingerprints as biometric authentication. The infrastructure exists. It’s just not fully commercialized yet due to a mix of policy, hardware costs, and awareness issues.

Coming from a tech background myself, I can confidently say: that building a biometric payment system backed by Aadhaar Pay would take barely a week to prototype. The real challenge? Hardware. Biometric scanners — whether for fingerprints or retina — aren’t free. That adds to the Merchant Discount Rate (MDR), which most merchants hesitate to bear, and in turn, the cost gets passed on to customers.


Let’s be real — we’re still struggling to accept convenience fees on UPI. Until we tackle that mindset and infrastructure challenges, reaching a "China-like" biometric payment adoption will remain aspirational.

But make no mistake — India is not far behind. We just need to wake up and support the tech that’s already here.

References: Aadhar Pay, Aadhar enabled Payment System



If you are amazed by this, please rate me by clicking my profile pic on the left. "It doesn't matter but we are still living in a competitive world."
raghumahajan
Click to expand...

Tweet is Nothing more than Rage Bait just to increase engagements which potentially helps in earning from X.
 
soccer said:
Nobody wants a biometric payment system in India to become common place, definitely not in a low-trust society like ours where scams are routine.
Click to expand...
I have been trying to tell THIS one! THIS is the exact reason why we don't deserve that right now. NPCI and Govt know about this. Building this won't be hard for anyone but the challenge is different.
 
From my point of view, we have has UPI for years now and I use it only within 2-3 km radius of my home, mostly because sometimes transactions get stuck in processing state, the shopkeeper doesn't accept it as a payment until his speaker says so.

We haven't put any guidelines on how payment failures should be handled. There are no dispute etc Built into the system. The fact for me is it's not a payment system like credit cards with well thought through protocols, its just a instant bank transfer engine.

I see people fighting with shopkeepers often coz money got deducted from their account but not received by merchant and transaction going into processing.

What we need is to fix UPI to make it reliable before we talk other advanced payment methods.
 
be careful man...this news outlet is a chinese funded outlet doing all sorts of things to further their anti india agenda...man pls think with your brain before being a victim to clickbait and "breaking news" headlines....
 
Last edited by a moderator:
raghumahajan said:
I recently came across a tweet that genuinely made my blood boil — people with zero clue are out there defaming our country, India, calling it a tech laggard compared to China.

Yes, China may currently have more commercialized biometric payment solutions — but let’s get the facts straight. India already has the foundation in place. Ever heard of Aadhaar Pay? It allows users to make payments using fingerprints as biometric authentication. The infrastructure exists. It’s just not fully commercialized yet due to a mix of policy, hardware costs, and awareness issues.

Coming from a tech background myself, I can confidently say: that building a biometric payment system backed by Aadhaar Pay would take barely a week to prototype. The real challenge? Hardware. Biometric scanners — whether for fingerprints or retina — aren’t free. That adds to the Merchant Discount Rate (MDR), which most merchants hesitate to bear, and in turn, the cost gets passed on to customers.


Let’s be real — we’re still struggling to accept convenience fees on UPI. Until we tackle that mindset and infrastructure challenges, reaching a "China-like" biometric payment adoption will remain aspirational.

But make no mistake — India is not far behind. We just need to wake up and support the tech that’s already here.

References: Aadhar Pay, Aadhar enabled Payment System



If you are amazed by this, please rate me by clicking my profile pic on the left. "It doesn't matter but we are still living in a competitive world."
raghumahajan
Click to expand...

I mean even if we are lets say world leader in digital payments, that hardly changes anything. China is a beast and we will take centuries to reach somewhere near its level.
 
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