[sunbaj]

Have been using Amazon Pay for most of my payments as earlier I used to do almost all of my shopping and utility bill payments via Amazon.

The second most preferred is PayTm since I use PayTm Bank which is linked to my UPI and usually maintain a balance of 5K in it for my UPI transactions.

[shankar.balan]

I think this is a question of habit and what one is most used to.
In this aspect GPay being an early bird, wins.
PayTM is pretty good too, as is PhonePe.
Mostly, the usage of these UPI apps are dictated by the acceptance level/ preference of the intended recipient.

[dailydriver]

A BHIM app (phonenumber@upi) user here.

It works when it works; takes long breaks and probably because it is associated with my SBI account, frequently asks me to come back after a while.

But for my unwillingness to share my bank details with private operators, I should have ditched this sarkari player long back. There's hardly anything worth gloating about BHIM, apart from its powerful sounding name.

* * *

That said, would like to know which UPI player provides seamless service for credit card based transactions. Might give it a try if it is good.

[mayuresh]

I evaluate apps mainly for speed of transaction (fast navigation / PIN entry etc) and bookkeeping (Retaining transaction remarks in your SoA) and full support for UPI protocol.

- Samsung Pay has a gesture to open the app fast - you don't have to locate the icon. It's a payment-only app, so less cluttered than others. But this is available on only a few of the Samsung phones.

- Many apps (GPay, some bank apps) have a feature to create a shortcut to the QR code scan functionality directly. This helps make payments fast, as compared to opening the app and navigating to QR Code menu.

- Some apps (mostly bank apps, for payments from the account you hold with them) replace PIN with OTP and they auto-read OTP. This makes payments fast.

- PIN entry screens of most of the apps suck. For some reason sometimes your typed digit does not get accepted and you have to watch your PIN entry cautiously. This is the reason above feature becomes attractive.

- Some apps and some banks are notorious for not maintaining your transaction remarks in your bank statement. This makes it difficult to recognize your payments when looking at the bank account (and creates a dependency on the app). Among apps PhonePe is notorious for not sharing your transaction remarks with the bank. Among banks DBS bank is known to eat away your remarks and not show them in SoA.

- Some apps do not support VPA of the form <acno>@<ifsc>.ifsc.npci. As per UPI protocol they must support, but they say this is invalid VPA. Only recently the support has started improving in most apps.

- Overall UPI ecosystem is notorious for inexplicable error messages and unexplained transaction failures. No app, including NPCI's own, would ever tell you exact reason why your transaction was rejected. Following up with the bank doesn't help either.

- There are strange transaction thresholds based on the payment method used - such as whether you are using deep linking, QR code or typing VPA etc. This is documented nowhere. You just get to know by trial and error. This gets really annoying.

- Not related to apps, but some banks allow UPI payment from the internet banking portal directly. Standard Chartered for one.

[mayuresh]

Originally Posted by dailydriver

That said, would like to know which UPI player provides seamless service for credit card based transactions. Might give it a try if it is good.

Not likely as MDR is involved. UPI is low cost peer to peer method with no cost to users (as yet). Cards have intermediaries sitting in between to make money. UPI model doesn't suit them.

There was a talk about enabling cards on UPI platform, but there was no clarity on MDR and it seems to have fizzled out.

[DigitalOne]

Earlier Gpay, now Paytm for the last 2 years.

Paytm wallet is very convenient for micro-payments if the receiver has a Paytm scan code (no pin required). If the receiver does not have a Paytm code, the app automatically transfers to UPI (pin required).

Around 50% of shopkeepers have Paytm scan code. So I keep my Paytm wallet loaded with around rs 1000 and payments are extremely fast 50% of the time. If I lose my phone and the hacker is able to access my Paytm app, the liability is limited to around rs 1000.

[RedTerrano]

I embraced BHIM as almost soon as it was available. Used it heavily and was quite satisfied with it.
Then google pay (then called Tez) appeared on the scene and like it's name suggested it was real Tez. Around the same BHIM started to have issues (I won't be surprised if these dots formed a pattern).

After the advent of Covid, I stopped using cash (only carry a 500 note in my wallet for super emergencies) and before I knew it, GPay became my default choice of mobile payment. Sure it has glitches once a while, but nothing serious for me.

[Rajeevraj]

I use Samsung Pay as default. But not really tied to one app. Sometimes I use Google Pay, sometimes Paytm. If one has an issue, I use the other. Making full use of the power of a unified payments interface

[pandey.jai]

I was very late to the UPI party. I started off with GPay when one of my cousins set it up for me. I think I made about 200 bucks on rewards before it pretty much stopped.

However, I like the interface - it’s fairly intuitive or at least I’m used to it. So it’s my preferred app. My spouse uses PayTM and I’ve tried it once or twice but it feels too cluttered for some reason.

I see some posts here talk about PayTM QR code in many stores. I thought all these codes work across the board. I’ve never run into a situation where the payment at the store didn’t work because I used GPay while the store QR was for PayTM.

Originally Posted by gupta_chd

This is true for G Pay as well. I use it regularly. In addition, G Pay can also be used for payment through credit card just by scanning QR code similar to UPI.

Does the credit card payment work with neighborhood stores? I thought the QR codes only worked with a bank account as the source of payment. Is there anything that I’m missing?

[GTO]

I love Google, use a whole lot of their products for personal & business use, have a few subscriptions with Google and am deep into their ecosystem. Hence, using Google Pay. I am a late adopter of UPI apps & payments, but gosh, it's so damn quick & convenient. My cash transactions have greatly reduced, and so have my NEFT transfers. Now, I use NEFT only for big expenses (salaries, web hosting etc.).

Kudos to all involved for rolling out this game-changer. Thanks to UPI & FASTag, I recently read about someone who did a long road-trip without a single payment in cash anywhere.

[Asoon]

Have been a UPI user from its day 1 and hence got accustomed to phonepe (i think it was first UPI product to market it well, Gpay came later and Paytm entered way later)

Majority of the transactions are p2p via contact or C2B via QR code and I feel it offers the most simplistic flow for these two cases 99% of usage cases.

Initial iterations of Gpay had a complicated flow for QR flow which turned me off. However, Gpay's infra is the best when it comes to getting transaction done in the areas with weak network connectivity (other apps take time to read qr and recognise vendor etc.)

[asingh1977]

My monthly cash transactions is almost zero. I primarily use PhonePe. Though I started my UPI journey using the vanilla BHIM App. Which I think is quite good too, in its simplicity and usage. BHIM creates one account example: 123456789a@UPI ; and inside this account one can join as many UPI bank accounts. So at payment, you do not need to specify the VPA address, but rather choose once the payment application (BHIM) opens up. Not sure if Google or PhonePe offer this.

Just more accustomed to PhonePe now.

I use PayTM twice a month for a transaction where the receiver insists money in the PayTM wallet, not on a UPI binding. And to top up my home's electricity meter!

[SS-Traveller]

Originally Posted by Eddy

...an account that mostly has a 4 digit balance only. I still have trust issues when it comes to using my own bank account for such transactions. Almost everything I do is via credit card.

Hoping that UPI via credit card (free) becomes mainstream soon.

Which ICICI Bank account allows 4 digit minimum balance?

I have trust issues with UPI too, so my UPI-enabled Axis account has a low 5 digit balance - but I use UPI to receive payment as well, in which case I transfer the amount out to another account ASAP. To pay, I generally use GPay, Amazon and CRED. I do have a Paytm account, but that is not linked to a bank account, only to a wallet and the associated Paytm bank account, which I maintain at zero balance.

A question to those who might know - of all the innumerable platforms that allow UPI transactions, whose security protocols and customer service are the best? I am told Paytm, Mobikwik and PhonePe are some of the worst, while Amazon and GPay are some of the best. Any information regarding this will be very welcome.

Also, the poll needs to have multiple options that can be selected.

[sagarpadaki]

I have PhonePe, Gpay, PayTM installed on my phone. I use the app matching the QR code . If there is PhonePe QR code, I use PhonePe app. In instances where the QR code does not belong to any of these three, I use PhonePe.

Long ago, I faced issues in cross platform payments, PhonePe on a PayTM QR where the transaction would hang or take a lot longer to go through. Hence followed this approach of matching App with the QR code. Now they have been optimized and such issues no longer occur I believe but I still follow this practice and it has never let me down..

[Eddy]

Originally Posted by SS-Traveller

Which ICICI Bank account allows 4 digit minimum balance?

.

It was my first salary account, opened in 2006. I moved on to HDFC as my salary account in 2015 but the ICICI account remained as such. Still a zero balance account.