UPI payments in India

UPI has the advantage over Paytm, FreeCharge, etc because

• UPI directly debits/credits your bank a/c.
• UPI is supported by Government of India. The government forces banks to charge little or no fee for transactions. Also the government makes rules, so that UPI is accepted in many places.

Hence prefer UPI.

To use UPI, you have 2 choices

1. Use BHIM app from Government of India. This is the only practical option, if you have a/c with a government bank like SBI, OBC, etc.
2. Use App of your bank e.g. ICICI has iMobile app. This App will usually give you more features than BHIM and will be faster. This option is available only from private banks like ICICI, HDFC, etc.

You can install both BHIM and private bank UPI app on one mobile.

Payment by UPI will continue to grow in India, primarily because the Government of India is forcing merchants, organizations, businesses, etc to accept UPI.

As a general guideline, the order of preference is

1. Use cash, if possible. This will have maximum privacy.
2. Use Credit card for online shopping because payments can be deferred by few months and refunds are convenient.
3. Use UPI e.g. while paying to a friend, when exact cash is not available; cheque is inconvenient; not POS machine is available.

Cash Withdrawals in India

With effect from 1-Mar-2017

• 4 free cash transactions (withdrawal and deposit total) are allowed per month per savings account.
• A charge of ₹150 will be levied per cash transaction after the free transactions.
• Upto ₹2,00,000 value of cash transaction (withdrawal and deposit total) are allowed per month from home branch of bank.
• After the free cash transaction value, a charge of ₹5 per ₹1000 will be levied for cash transactions.

To combat these rules, Indians should

• Have savings account in different banks.
• Withdraw ₹2 lakhs cash per month per savings account.
• Withdraw cash by going to bank personally.
• Don't withdraw from ATM, because ATM limits is much lesser.

Cash means privacy and freedom. Accept cash and pay cash wherever possible.

Indian budget 2017 - The good, bad and ugly

A good budget

• Reduces taxes
• Reduces deficit by cutting subsidies
• Reduces bureaucracy, rules and regulations
• Gives more freedom to people.

So here are the highlights of budget 2017

• No cash transaction above Rs 3 lakhs. Bad because it reduces freedom. People should decide the mode of payment, not government rules.
• Mahila Shakti Kendra for welfare of women to allocated Rs 500 crores. 60 days interest waiver for farmers. MGNREGRA allocated Rs 48,000 crores. Ugly because government subsidies are mostly wasted.
• Tax rate for people earning between 2.5 to 5 lakh brought down from 10% to 5%. Good.
• Foreign investment board abolished. PSEs like IRCTC to be listed. Good. Lesser the bureaucracy, the better.
• Cash donation to political parties curbed at Rs 2,000. Good.
• Higher taxes for rich. Bad.

Overall the budget doesn't do anything significant. So the Indian economic conditions will remain mostly the same i.e.

• Large scale corruption
• High inflation
• Lack of skills to compete globally
• Rupee will continue to fall in value against real money i.e. gold/silver.