24×7 Real-Time Payments: A US Imperative

Nick did not have Venmo and I do not use Paypal. The amounts were small and odd and I had not got used to paying using my mobile banking app that was too complex to use. It was my first week as a student in the US and we were just settling a group lunch amongst a few friends. I had got so used to paying using 24*7*365 Unified Payment Interface (UPI), back home in India, there were times when I opened my wallet only to embarrassingly realize that there is no cash. So this was a unique challenge. In the end, we resolved it where I paid a friend who had both Venmo and Paypal that Nick had and paid him! So clearly it was a complex solution using a ‘correspondent individual’ just like the global payments network uses a ‘correspondent bank’.

In India, sending this money would have been as simple as sending a text using the new age 24*7*365 digital age central payment clearing service known as Unified Payments Interface (UPI). UPI has allowed the creation of an open-loop payment system that any player can plug into. It does not matter which bank/wallet one is a member …