And most UPI are linked with phone number, so you can also pay via phone number if UPI is linked with it.

it's literally one of the least secure things you can have.

The government aggressively manages the system to prevent any single company from getting too much weight and forces them to address scams or other system occurs in almost real time by the threat of being thrown off the rails.

It’s actually shocking that only a few years ago RBI was concerned about concentration risk of having NPCI (the platform operator of UPI) and invited proposals from banks and companies for NUE (New Umbrella Entity) licenses. Then something changed and it canceled all those proposals.

NPCI has a monopoly on instant fund transfers (leaving aside the RBI run RTGS). NPCI wants to limit concentration risk among its clients by trying to push for lower market share among competitors within its platform, like Google Pay or WhatsApp Pay.

As for scams, there are plenty of them on UPI every single day, and there’s no way to get any fraudulently transferred funds back without filing a police complaint and waiting for them to do their jobs (and greasing their palms depending on the amount for the job to be done).

I guess in Europe there is just much less demand for systems like this because NFC terminals are you ubiquitous.