India: Currensea and UPI

[memesweeper]

Just back from a quick trip to India. Found Currensea to be near-useless. For example you cannot buy a ticket for a flight on Indigo, the largest domestic airline, as they use a payment intermediary (RAZ). I’m sure acceptance in person in Europe for Currensea is going to be as good as any other debit card, but if you want to use it with an intermediary like Curve, or Raz you’re scuppered.

I ended up using Starling or cash pretty much everywhere in India instead (Uber being a rare exception of something that worked with Currensea). Very disappointing to find a card targeting foreign travelers works so badly abroad. Incidentally, many Indian merchants and ATMs are set up to work with local cards only so foreign card acceptance generally is poor, and many exclusively UPI instead of cards (QR code and app based transfers). Currensea’s additional controls and limitations only made the poor card acceptance issue worse.

If/when I return to India, I’ll be doing a UPI KYC check before leaving the international point of entry:

https://www.npci.org.in/what-we-do/upi-global/upi-one-world

— apparently this enables UPI payments with a foreign SIM, and UPI is the default, and very often only, accepted non-cash method in hotels, shops, markets stalls, railway stations etc etc.

I’d be interested to hear if anyone has had luck as a foreigner with UPI and/or better success with Currensea.

[JDB]

In China, few merchants accept foreign debit or credit cards of any sort. Acceptance is better in tourist hotels/restaurants/sites and of course tourist shopping places but in most restaurants or shops etc. it’s cash or WeChat/Alipay only.

[BBbetter]

China and India are trying to decouple from western markets and systems that we are familiar with. While the primary aim for China was to rely less on the west, India had the additional aim of reducing physical cash usage that led to a big shadow economy. It’s accelerated even more since sanctions on Russia.

Not sure if you noticed, no one uses Apple Pay in India as Apple hasn’t worked with local banks for local cards. Apple doesn’t want to comply with local laws. But your starling card will still work using Apple Pay and many still look at it surprisingly when foreigners use Apple Pay.

For one off visitors, two debit cards like starling and one with Visa are the best. And get google pay if possible. Gpay is also popular and it’s worth the pain to carry an additional mobile.

Not sure if you have read the requirements for UPI registration, but they’ll need a lot of your personal data and data protection is zero in India. Your data can be easily sold by anyone in the organisation you deal with. So think twice before signing up.

[masaccio]

BBbetter wrote:

Not sure if you noticed, no one uses Apple Pay in India as Apple

That’s a bit sweeping isn’t it? I’m pretty sure I tapped with my phone a lot on my last trip in April. In Mumbai at least, the only thing I could not use my iPhone or chip credit cards for was Ola which was cash only (for me).

It felt a very, very long way away from where China has landed. Last time I tried to use cash in a taxi, I got a look like I’d spat in his face.

[memesweeper]

masaccio wrote:

That’s a bit sweeping isn’t it? I’m pretty sure I tapped with my phone a lot on my last trip in April. In Mumbai at least, the only thing I could not use my iPhone or chip credit cards for was Ola which was cash only (for me).

… no, I think @BBbetter is pretty much correct — nobody uses Apple Pay. It does, however, work on some terminals (and had somewhat better acceptance than a physical foreign card in my limited experience). But market penetration for Apple Pay locally is clearly close to zero, I had some very funny looks trying to use it.

[masaccio]

memesweeper wrote:

If/when I return to India, I’ll be doing a UPI KYC check before leaving the international point of entry:

https://www.npci.org.in/what-we-do/upi-global/upi-one-world

What’s the app? That link talks about an ‘issuer app’ but searching the App Store, all I see is a bunch of spammy looking apps and nothing official.

[sherlockholmes]

This is an interesting thread as I am an expat living in India. In general to use an international card for travel payments (where the vendor doesn’t accept international cards – i.e. Indigo) you can just use an OTA. I regularly use ixigo with an international card.

I have an Indian bank account and so use UPI the whole time, and not head of anyone using it with an international account. You can use Apple Pay in the higher end retailers and restaurants other wise for most other purchases of a significant value a normal international visa/mastercard (physical) works fine. I’ve never had to switch to my local card.

@masaccio – an issuer app would be any application that facilitates UPI. These are PayTM / Gpay / PhonePe (and more).

[BBbetter]

masaccio wrote:

BBbetter wrote:

Not sure if you noticed, no one uses Apple Pay in India as Apple

That’s a bit sweeping isn’t it? I’m pretty sure I tapped with my phone a lot on my last trip in April. In Mumbai at least, the only thing I could not use my iPhone or chip credit cards for was Ola which was cash only (for me).

It felt a very, very long way away from where China has landed. Last time I tried to use cash in a taxi, I got a look like I’d spat in his face.

I shouldve been more specific. No one in India = residents there who cannot access cards outside India.

Foreigners like us obviously can use it, as even local mastercard and visa cards come with contactless by default and the card machines are also contactless enabled (thank god!).

[memesweeper]

sherlockholmes wrote:

@masaccio – an issuer app would be any application that facilitates UPI. These are PayTM / Gpay / PhonePe (and more).

Paytm and PhonePe are available in the iOS App Store. However, are either of them available to foreigners? ie compatible with upi one world?

sherlockholmes wrote:

This is an interesting thread as I am an expat living in India. In general to use an international card for travel payments (where the vendor doesn’t accept international cards – i.e. Indigo) you can just use an OTA.

Indigo use a payment intermediary which does accept international cards. Unfortunately Currensea proactively block all transactions via this intermediary. I used another card, rather than using an OTA.

[masaccio]

Reading about KYC and getting documents verified, I can imagine this is as painful as when I bought a physical SIM in India once. I think I will give it a miss until it’s a bit more locked down.

China can figure out how to track us through online registration of AliPay, I’m sure the Indian government can do that without a human if they wanted to.

Quite what China and India do with all their trillions of transaction logs I have no idea.

[ian_h]

For UPI in India the offer for foreigners is slim.

I found Mony https://havemony.com/ far and away the best, the KYC was painless and quick all in-app and the CS was great when my friend needed help.

They do online KYC (you have to be physically present in India but it works), the main ones advertised on the Government pages either needed physical KYC miles away or the one who offered it at the airport denied all knowledge as they get a better commission on currency exchange..

[Michael C]

I must say that Currensea worked perfectly with ATMs in China…and I think
the ATM/foreign card issue is bank-dependent? Although a while back, I was there a year and only
used a foreign card the entire time to withdraw.

[can2]

All this reminded me of my arrival at India 2 days after its big demonetisation campaign in 2016:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Indian_banknote_demonetisation

No exchange offices nor ATMs were working. I had to use my “social skills” that I had acquired from my backpacker days to survive. It was a stressful 10 days to say the least.