50p 2017

The consumer is usually at the end of value chain in payments business and many times doesnt have a say in design of these systems. Governments, Regulators pitch in to add some safegaurds usually as an after effect. Development of payment tech rarely has the feedback loop from the actual user (payer). #CashlessConsumer is a consumer awareness initiative to drive awareness, educate consumers about digital / cashless payment systems, voice consumer concerns, share security best practices, make consumers a stakeholder in the design of payment systems, participate in development of payment systems where-ever possible, seek better consumer rights in cashless systems.

Outline

How can technical folks help #CashlessConsumer. CashlessConsumer is a bunch of digital payment enthusiasts who are also concious about their rights both as consumers, citizens interested in contributing their 2 paise for a better cashless tech with technical inputs from consumer perspective.

###Understanding UPI
UPI is a new generation payment system and is a vast platform with huge potential. UPI, being built as part of India Stack, with an Open API policy is developer friendly in putting out technical specifications publically. Its important for us as developers, consumers to understand the platform and contribute to a payment systems by suggesting improvements, raising concerns, security issues. CashlessConsumer’s Understanding UPI is an effort to learn, understand, contribute to UPI.

I shall briefly talk on some of work and motivations, learnings from them.

• UPI Birds eye technical overview - Understanding players, system designs.
• UPI Deeplinking Specifications - Localized QRCode Generator.
• UPI - Application comparison matrix, who is the winner? How to determine best UPI app for you? - scaling it with App Metadata Extractor.
• UPI - Platform Bugs - Quick overview of some of the bugs we reported to NPCI through India Stack which are being worked on and a way forward for community bug reporting infrastructure (currently being setup).

###BHIM

• BHIM - How it is different from other UPI apps?.
• Why a parallel 2-laned free road is important to the superhighway called UPI?.
• Need for FOSS solution to help in making the 2-laned free road compete with super highways.

###Beyond UPI

CashlessConsumer is not just about UPI. As we have more bandwidth, we aspire to be community voice in bridging the gap between various cashless system players and consumers of these technology (Both merchants and consumers). Our areas of work would include, but not restricted to

• Build Awareness tools - Onboarding kits, Merchant kits, Q&A online forums, Localize information (In a demonetized world, irrespective of political views, there is a need for ethical cashless evangelism by helping lesser technical folks with what you know to make their life better).
• Build Assisted Tech - Where ever possible, help build tech using opensource tools, security best practice guides for consumers, security research on the systems / apps; “Know your app” / KYA systems privacy, ToS decoders, app comparison dashboards, opendata toolsets to help consumers have enough information in chosing from the variety of digital payment instruments.
• In a full open API world, can community build and run a FOSS Payment Service Provider? What do we need to get there?
• Help organize consumers for improved consumer protection, lead policy directions focussed towards consumers. -- Feedback to Watal Committee Report

Interested? Join us, lets work for a fair cashless system, together.

Speaker bio

A digital paying consumer for last decade having faced fair share of consumer apathy at various times by design of systems, entities who also happens to be fan of opensource / opendata and is figuring out how to help self and the cause of a cashless consumer in a digital world.

Links

• http://cashlessconsumer.in
• http://twitter.com/CashlessConsumr
• http://github.com/CashlessConsumer
• http://blog.srik.me/2016/12/10/cashlessconsumer-why/
• https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1VWtXcDgyLOgDR-f2b32zhJGuMyG6RRgzoRtQk8mlRsI

Slides

https://speakerdeck.com/srikanthlogic/cashlessconsumer-how-we-can-help-consumers-of-payment-tech