India musings

India is trying to go digital but still lacks lot of basic stuff and the process is not at all customer friendly. Identity and identity theft is a big concern that causes lot of security and other implementations but they inturn causes lot of inconvenience.

Signing up for a bank mobile account is a big pain - you need to link your phone number with the bank account, have it registered in Aadhar and also have a debit card ready. Even then, lot of times, there is one or the other issue that prevents from getting the work done. And not to mention, banks force you to get debit cards which incur yearly fees and people don't even use the cards. But if you need to sign up for bank's mobile banking, they need debit card for verification.

If you try to add a bank account in Google Pay, you cannot try adding more than three times as it sends a sms for registration and if it exceeds more than 3 times, you need to wait for 24 hours. This is such a pain and harrassment in lieu of calling cybersecurity.

Trying to speak to a customer care excecutive to help your senior citizen parents is another pain as they trouble a lot just for verification. Lot of times, old parents are not familiar with the process or the new digital stuff and getting anything done over phone where the customer case executive asks for security questions (which in most cases senior citizens do not remember or cannot recall) and anyone if tries to help them, the customer care executives on the phone do not help citing example of security and fraud precention.

We need to streamline and do a better job of customer verification and helping the people. Need to update the process so that people embrace it positively and face minimum roadblocks.