I have been a privacy and infosec consultant for 15 years now, and the other day even I got scammed (almost). This was a very sophisticated scammer, who had taken advantage of data breached from Government databases to convince me they were genuine. They only lost the plot when they asked me to read out an OTP. The specific lesson here is that, well, if someone calls you saying they’re from CID, and even if they have your data, don’t ever give anyone your card details or OTP.

And now with AI, scams are going to become more sophisticated.

NPCI to Allow AI to Make Payments for You

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) – the daddy organization of UPI – is set to launch agentic payments, according to reports.

NPCI is said to launch a ‘Unified Agent Protocol’ next week at the Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai. The protocol would allow AI agents to execute small-ticket UPI payments without the user having to manually approve each transaction, using the existing UPI Circle (for the user to give authorization to the AI) and Reserve Pay (to set aside the money for these payments) features.

This would probably be useful for ordering groceries or paying utility bills. But it increases the scope for financial crimes. So, use with caution.

Or better yet, don’t trust AI with your money! You can use AI to track discounts or deals or something, but not to make payments without your authorization every single time.

Coincidentally, as I was finalising this post, OpenAI just released Astra, its latest and greatest model that experts are actually saying packs a punch. It also – admitted by OpenAI themselves – is more dangerous and prone to carrying out cyber attacks. Anyway, where it relates to the news here is that this release was accompanied by a video which my friend and I saw on YouTube (no, I’m not linking it here). In the video, a user tells the AI to order food and later another user tells the AI to reserve a tennis court. This bothered me, because it implied that the AI had the users’ payment information.

That’s not something I am willing to do for a long time – give the AI my payment details. Not even card details, let alone UPI. Remember very recently, ChatGPT’s hack of HuggingFace (which NVIDIA is now buying btw) and Claude doing something similar. These AI models are already anonymously breaking into secure databases and stealing data. A few episodes ago, I repoted that hackets literally asked Meta AI for personal details of Instagram users, and Meta AI just gave these details to hackets. You can be sure that payment details were handed over and some money was stolen.

It is far, far easier to scam an AI than a human. Threat actors have already done it. Threat actors, who are already getting more sophisticated, will easily be able to persuade the AI to hand over payment details. And people’s real, hard earned money will be stolen.

Hence, I’m not excited at all about this Unified Agent Protocol. Even with spend limits or other controls in place.

In other news – NPCI is set to make UPI Autopay interoperable, which means you can port your autopay mandates and merchants across UPI apps. How many UPI apps do you use anyway?

Other UPI News

PhonePe launches PhonePe UPI 123Pay, which allows for offline digital payments on feature phones (which is another name for a non-smartphone or dumbphone). This means that people will be able to make UPI payments without requiring an internet connection. Btw, did you know there are still some 200 million feature phones in use across India?

This feature will work using SMS Architecture – an offline, SMS-based system. It will support P2P transfers via mobile numbers or UPI IDs, merchant payments, bank balance checks and transaction history viewing. If the phone has a camera, it will be able to scan QR codes to make payments.

It will also come pre-installed on select feature phones from Nokia, HMD, Lava and Itel.

This Week in: Zomato

Zomato lays off 240 employees and shuts its Hyderabad Customer Support Operations. It seems this is because Zomato will rely more on external service providers for customer support.

Speaking of Zomato – BNP Paribas and Millenium Fund Management sell some 3,300 crore worth of shares in parent company Eternal. Sketchy.

Zomato also announced it removed analogue diary dishes from its platform and has a zero tolerance policy towards analogue dairy (basically, fake paneer and equivalent). This follows FSSAI’s directive against the sale of analogue foods, from April this year. The thing is, they removed dishes which the respective restaurant declared contains analogue paneer. It threatened to delist restaurants.

On analogue dairy in general- rather than assuming it is bad for health, you’re encouraged to do your own research. And remember that the FSSAI directive was not that analogue dairy is bad for health, it’s that mislabeling them as genuine dairy products is illegal. So, read your labels.

This Week in: Jio

Jio launches JioPC, which it announced in last years’ AGM. It is a Computer As A Service (CaaS?) where you can install it on your old computer for a subscription fee (starting 1000 for 2 months) or buy a set top box to turn your TV into a computer. Relies heavily on the cloud but that’s ok I guess.

JioHotstar launches in the UK, Canada and Singapore. Big Desi populations. Nice. It has so far launched only quarterly and annual plans in these territories though. Not nice.

And, Jio Platforms gets SEBI nod for IPO. Oh, what a surprise. Fun fact – Meta owns a minority stake in Jio Platforms already through a subsidiary called Jaadhu Holdings. What a name.

Headlines

• Other Layoffs: Oracle to layoff another 3,000 people in India, according to reports. This was expected, but is still sad. PayPal lays of 600 people in India. Sad sad.
• Center has notified the 1.28 lakh crore Semicon 2.0 scheme, where the IT Ministry has set the target of developing 1 lakh additional semiconductor engineers. So if you are an eligible semiconductor startup you can get up to 15 crores as seed funding under this scheme.
• There were reprots that Vinfast has halted car production in India until it reassesses costs. Vinfast put out a statement saying that’s not true, it only asked local suppliers to hold work on local parts development for some vehicles, until it reasses costs.
• Deepinder Goyal’s Temple acquires London-based longevity medicine practice Longevous, hoping to get clinical and scientific expertise.
• BlackRock buys Ather shares worth 445 crores. It’s a bit of news worth newsing because, well, it’s BlackRock. Also, a few days earlier, Hero MotoCorp acquired an additional 3% stake in Ather. Good for electric 2-wheelers I guess. A few days earlier Ather did launch a Konarc e-scooter for 1 lakh, offering Upto 200km range. Ola Electric also launched an e-scooter called S1Z, with two variants offering between 179 and 300km range.
• Eutelsat OneWeb, a French LEO provider, has reportedly asked DoT to fast track its pending security clearance so it can launch satellite broadband services in India. Interesting. This has been going on since 2023, apparently.
• Airtel is offering 1 year of Duolingo premium to its subscribers. Check if you’re eligible.
• Wipro installs employee surveillance tool, just like TCS did recently. The company is calling it a ‘Real-time productivity software” but I mean, come on. It’s surveillance.

Recommended Buy of the Week

Just finished reading Project Hail Mary. Real page-turner of a book. I wonder if the movie will be as good…