He also praised Indian innovation India Stack.
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Indian American digital economy expert Vivek Wadhwa on Monday said that the United States can learn many lessons from India’s move towards a cashless economy.
“India may have leapfrogged the US technology industry with simple and practical innovations and massive grunt work. It has built a digital infrastructure that will soon process billions more transactions than bitcoin ever has. With this, India will skip two generations of financial technologies and build something as monumental as China’s Great Wall and American’s interstate highways,” Wadhwa wrote in an op-ed titled in The Washington Post.
Titled “What the US can learn from India’s move toward cashless society,” the op-ed argues that the Unified Payment Interface (UPI) launched by India has eliminated billing processor and transaction costs are zero, unlike credit card payments.
“There is no technology barrier to prevent a UPI from working in the US. Transfers would happen within seconds, even faster than the 10 minutes than a bitcoin transaction takes,” he wrote.
He also praised the Indian innovation India Stack, which is a series of secured and connected systems that allow people to store and share personal data such as addresses, bank statements, medical records, employment records and tax filings, and it enables the digital signing of documents.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s demonetization policy was a bold move that will surely produce long-term benefit, Wadhwa argued.
“There are many lessons that Silicon Valley and the United States can learn from the developing world,” he wrote.