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Creation of alternate global digital currency is about politics,  governance and ultimately power . It is not about technology and economics. That is why world leaders are worried that facebook might become more powerful than they are if it manages to create a global currency used by billions of people world wide. 

Time will tell how things evolve.

Why does one need a DLT to do all this stuff?Its an oxymoron to use DLT philosophy for book transfers. 

While Open banking is a regulatory initiative smart banks understand the business model of API economy. They are not going to open everything just because tech companies are asking for it.  Banks will open up those things that are required for compliance while work very cautiously in creating an ecosystem of partners to leverage the investments in API infrastructure.  Banks are trying to make business cases beyond compliance and they are smart enough not let the tech companies to walk away with the cake.

In India we have this facility with UPI (Unified Payments Interface) for some time now.

Very exciting to have so many options , but as a consumer I wonder why should i give up my credit card in lieu of UPI. I dont get any benift with UPI while i get almost a 30 days credit plus reward points with a credit card.  For UPI payments, PISPs like Google pay , paytm , phonepe do offer cashbacks in form of scratch cards , but they are smart and use transaction data to see if the consumer has adopted their payment wallet and eventually stop giving cashbacks . 

To conclude , i have gone back to credit cards where i see more benefit as a consumer than UPI payments.

Sounds like nice feature , but really has consumeri sm come down to such  a level that you need a third party too put aside change from your regular purchases to make people "start saving and investing towards their future" ?

Or is just the digitisation of the old fashioned piggy banks where one use to drop spare change  in it and not worry about carrying a heavy wallet.

Either way I dont understand which customer segment is asking for these features. May bE its the Millennial thing!!!!

I would like to know the fees charged by Walmart. I think the fees charged by money transfer companies like Western union or money gram are still quite high ( 5 to 7 %). Off course for low value transactions these come out to be cheap compared to 35 USD that you have to pay for wire transfer , but i still think it is high .

Maybe ATM visits are also considered as branch visits 😀

@Ketharaman  with HDFC i am assured that i will never make a double payment even in case of connectivity failure. Just sharing my experience.

With HDFC you get an SMS the moment your transaction is authorised. So if you have a patchy internet connection but if you get an SMS that means the transaction has gone through. The webpage on your machine will just time out but you will be assured that the payment is done.

There is however a possibility that there is a connection issue between merchant gateway and HDFC so the merchant doesn't get the authorosation response and he displays payment failure meesage to you . In this case depending upon the amount and your risk appetite you can do the payment again . HDFC will again authorise this transaction and you will get SMS confirmation , but when it comes to settlement only the second transaction is settled while the first transaction gets cancelled.

I have experienced this quite a few times and i am comfortable relying on this system when it comes to my regular merchants like amazon, tata docomo , makemytrip etc. 

Many small business or service providers like carpenters , plumbers , milkman , newspaper agent etc prefer cheque if not cash. One of the main reasons is that it is easier for them to keep a track of who has paid and who has not. These people dont maintain computerised records so for them reconciling digital payments is very difficult.

Tried to use M-Visa at a few restaurants but the manger was reluctant to accept. This because you dont get an acknowldgement of payment  being recived at the terminal where you do Mvisa transaction. The manager or the cashier at till then has to call some central number to confirm that the payment is indeed complete. Then they have to reconclie at the end of day. This is deemed too risky and adding friction in the selling process at point of sale. 

Spay has advantage here over Mvisa. But they should take a cue from Paytm and promote their product aggressively otherwise there is only one winner.