Thread by @muralipiyer

The crux of this:
You really don’t need a credit card. If you entered workforce now, you don’t have to get one at all.
If you are going abroad, you can always buy international credit cards against a deposit.
With IMPS and UPI, you can lead a cashless life in urban areas.

Incredibly, that “demonetisation” had forced many shops to have UPI enabled payment options.

National Payments Corporation of India(NPCI), unlike typical Govt organisation, had come up with a very good digital transaction system.
They started with RuPay, a replacement for “visa”

NPCI is a not-for-profit company. The core promoters are State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Canara Bank, Bank of Baroda, Union Bank of India, Bank of India, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Citibank N. A. and HSBC. More shareholders were added from the financial space.

Of course, the NPCI journey started with the ATM network in 2009.
National Financial Switch was the first endeavour.
Then there was the NACH.

NEFT and RTGS got strengthened then.
After that came IMPS.

NEFT was the first evolutionary step. The idea was to just replicate typical settlement system. This was a batch based system. RTGS was needed because some of the large transactions had to be done real time.
IMPS used the upgraded backend to do on the spot transactions.

In the evolutionary process, IMPS was just bringing RTGS like speed to NEFT transactions.

The same backend was then used to explore the next idea: Virtual bank accounts.

Or, the birth of UPI.
UPI enabled companies like PayTM to do banking transactions too instead of becoming a mere wallet.
UPI brought the ease of digital wallet with the safety of a bank account.

@NPCI_NPCI is like the Apple of financial space.
They probably never invented a single thing from scratch; but they rebuilt from scratch one of the most innovative systems for moving money from one place to another.

The other transformation is cheap mobile. BHIM couldn’t have happened had the cheap smartphones (yeah, thank you China for subsidising our mobiles) and cheap data (thank you Ambani for just being you when you start a business) not come at the right time.

A casual glance at history will show you that seemingly unconnected things happen together at exactly the right time and at the right place, that somehow become the crux of transformative disruption.

This Wuhan virus pandemic came at almost the best time. Yeah, our hospitals are still a mess. But, we would not have been able to handle the pandemic had it not been for the aptly timed mobile and NCPI-led digital revolution.

It’s entirely possible for anyone to just carry a mobile and buy almost anything with an app.
We have vegetable vendors to mini malls, local pan wala to online biggies, all able to serve with UPI and a mobile app.

The millennials(those born at the turn of the century) are so lucky that they don’t have to do a lot of things like the way we had to.

A person entering workforce can join the company and then call up a bank to get his salary account created. There is no need to spend half a day in the bank branch to get it done. There is no need to carry xeroxes of all documents out of fear of delays.

A netbanking account and even UPI id is just a matter of minutes away.
Most stuff can be done over a call to the customer care if the bank’s local contact person hadn’t already done it for you.

There is probably only a handful of places where you have to carry cash. (Even religious places accept donations via UPI now.)

There was a time when keeping a bit of cash for emergency was deemed a necessity. We now know that mobile, network coverage and bank balance is enough

Investments can all be done now using mobile phones.
Health insurance shouldn’t need a branch visit if you don’t have any bad habits or a rare medical history.
Life insurance is now doable with an app. You can do Mutual funds with apps.

You want to explore stock markets, your broker will give you an app for that too.
(Even half a decade ago, it was close to impossible to open a trading account from anywhere.) Nowadays, all the work from opening a trading account to start actual investment can be done remotely.

I only talked about NPCI. AMFI has a unified interface.

Exchanges still require you to go through a broker though. And there are still a few issues that may require a personal visit.

The reason I highlighted NPCI is because NPCI is one of the most underrated organisations. It shows what industry bodies should be coming together to do.
The potential for digital revolution is not even explored by many industries.

To summarise:
For a young person who just started earning now, you are lucky to be born in India. Money matters can be done with a few taps on your phone, or a few calls.

You can choose to live a simple life with lots of savings and early financial independence now, if you want

One of the “missing things” highlighted:

(I don’t use digilockers. I am still an old fashioned person in some aspects.)