I went to Goa this weekend and was pretty excited to explore the beautiful place.
On the first day itself, we went to a beach and someone approached us asking if we’d be interested to do ski jetting.
We saw others doing it and decided to give it a shot.
It was fun, and all four of us finished our turns, and now it was time for the payment. It came around Rs. 2,800 for the four of us in total.
We asked for their Google Pay/UPI ID so that we can transfer online (especially since we were at the beach and we didn’t have wallets with us)
But they were very reluctant and kept on asking for the payment in cash.
Since we had no alternative solution, we kept on pushing for Gpay.
In the end, they asked us to do the UPI payment to two numbers, Rs.2000 to one account (The owner of the Ski Jet) and Rs. 800 to another number (The commission of the people who got us to do the activity)
I thought, yea the “Buyer” of Google Pay (Who decided to accept payments via UPI ID) is the owner of the Ski Jet, but the “users” are the salespeople who earn via tips/commissions. For them, Google pay makes it harder to split between them and the owner.
Read this newsletter I wrote weeks ago to understand who is a user, buyer, decision-maker and influencer
I saw the same incidents repeating in restaurants, flea markets and almost every small shop we went to.
Google pay / UPI ID is solving the problem for the “buyer” (owner of the business) and the customer (Or who is doing the payment) but is not very much suited for the waiters/salesmen who are eager to get tips and commissions, thus they try their best not to use the product at all.
If the UPI apps can innovate and bring in an easier way for salesmen/waiters to get tipped, this problem could be solved and I feel it should definitely be addressed.
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