Bill Gates praises India’s Digital Finance approach

Microsoft Corporation co-founder Bill Gates has lauded India’s policies for financial innovation and inclusion. The tech pioneer has said that his philanthropic foundation is working with other countries to introduce open-source technologies based on its implementation.

Gates talked about India’s policies that have lowered the cost and friction of distributing aid to the poor, especially during the pandemic. The ambitious platforms India has created for universal identification and digital payments, also taking into account the world’s largest biometric database and a system for sending rupees between any bank or smartphone app, is commendable. 

“If people are going to study one country right now, other than China, I’d say they should look at India,” Gates said at the Singapore Fintech Festival on Tuesday, as reported by Bloomberg. “Things are really exploding there, and innovation around that system is phenomenal.”

The demonetization brought into effect by the Indian government in November 2016, validating most of the country’s high-value banknotes in a move to curb corruption and push Indians away from cash, paved the way for Indian digital payments to take off. The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has been helped by booming smartphone use and wireless data rates in India that are among the lowest globally.

India mandates that companies like Facebook Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Walmart Inc., Paytm, and any new upstart to use its UPI platform so payments can be sent easily among all services with zero user fees also being a requirement.

India’s biometric system that is called ‘Aadhaar’ which is “foundation” in Hindi — has raised privacy concerns among the citizens of the country because it can also be used for government surveillance of citizens. Prime Minister Of India Narendra Modi opposed the system before his party came to power, but has since embraced it. Countries Including Morocco, Bangladesh, and Russia have expressed interest in the approach.

Gates, overall, was optimistic about how quickly vaccines are being prepared to address the Covid-19 pandemic but warned against complacency.

“We can’t forget that another pandemic will come, so we need to invest and be ready,” he said. “Digital things overall — remote learning, telemedicine, digital finance — were greatly advanced. So even though the pandemic has been terrible, it has pushed some of these innovations, including how quickly we make vaccines.”

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