The Citizen Advocate Summary: Declaring
April 11 as Safe ePay Day
Proposing April 11 as Safe ePay
Day to mark UPI’s pilot launch on April 11, 2016, by NPCI with 21 banks,
initiated by Dr. Raghuram G. Rajan in Mumbai. This initiative celebrates UPI’s
seamless integration of banking and merchant payments.
August 21 – Appeal No 91
April 11 – Declare ‘Safe ePay
Day’,
Yes, April 11 is vacant in the UN
Observance Day calendar
UPI 10th
Birthday -April 11 2026 – 233 Days to go
---------------------------------
August 21 World Entrepreneurs’ Day ×
April 11 Safe ePay Day: Global Innovation, Secure Transactions
World Entrepreneurs' Day is
celebrated on August 21st each year to recognize the contributions of
entrepreneurs and innovators who drive economic growth and create
jobs. It's a day to celebrate the courage, vision, and impact of those who
turn ideas into reality and build businesses from the ground up.
Yes,
innovators and entrepreneurs can change the course of the world. Are you ready
to explore/innovate?
World Entrepreneurs’ Day × Safe ePay Day: Innovate Boldly, Pay Safely
Published for August 21 – World
Entrepreneurs’ Day; intertwined with the proposed April 11 – Safe ePay Day.
Entrepreneurs are society’s
“possibility engines.” They identify gaps, rally teams, and bring new value
into the world. Every August 21, World Entrepreneurs’ Day celebrates
this creative courage—of founders, small-business owners, side-hustlers,
student builders, and the communities that lift them up.
While the day isn’t a United
Nations observance, it is widely promoted by entrepreneurship networks and
calendars across the world.(Awareness Days, International
Days)
Yet there’s an invisible force
that either accelerates or stalls these dreams: trust in digital payments.
That’s why pairing World Entrepreneurs’ Day with a proposed April 11 – Safe
ePay Day makes strategic sense. If entrepreneurship is the engine, safe
ePayments are the oil that keeps it running—reducing friction, scaling
revenues, and building long-term customer confidence.
Why entrepreneurs and safe
ePayments belong in the same sentence
Across every stage—from
validating an idea to scaling globally—founders depend on payments that are instant,
interoperable, and fraud-resistant:
- Sales & Subscriptions:
Online checkouts must minimize drop-offs while enforcing strong
authentication. In the EU and UK, Strong Customer Authentication (SCA)
under PSD2 requires multi-factor checks to reduce fraud, changing how
founders design checkout flows.(Finance,
Visa, Stripe)
- Marketplaces & Platforms:
Name-check systems like the UK’s Confirmation of Payee (CoP) help
route funds to the right account and curb misdirected payments and some
types of APP fraud—CoP surpassed 2 billion checks and averages 2+
million checks per day.(Pay.UK)
- Real-time rails for cash flow:
Whether you’re collecting from customers or paying suppliers, instant
schemes matter. The US FedNow network now counts 1,400+
participants (banks/credit unions), with volumes climbing as
businesses adopt real-time settlement.(FRB Services)
Safe ePay Day would spotlight
these guardrails and good practices, encouraging founders to design for
security from the first prototype, not as an afterthought.
Global celebrations & marquee
events entrepreneurs can plug into
Entrepreneurial energy is
global—and so are the forums that nurture it. Here are celebrations and events
you can anchor around World Entrepreneurs’ Day and continue across the
calendar:
- Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) – November
(worldwide): A distributed festival of workshops, pitch
nights, and policy dialogues run by local partners in 170+ countries. Mark
your diary for November 2025 as the next edition.(GenGlobal, DECA, State Department)
- Web Summit – Lisbon (Nov 10–13, 2025): One
of the world’s largest tech gatherings, convening founders, investors, and
policymakers.(Web
Summit, Wikipedia)
- Slush – Helsinki (Nov 19–20, 2025):
Proudly “founder-focused,” Slush curates deep conversations between top
operators and backers.(slush.org, Slush)
- VivaTech – Paris (June 2025):
Europe’s flagship innovation show, blending startups, corporates, and
public-sector leaders—open to the public on its final day.(EIT, Firework)
- TiE Global programs (worldwide):
From the TiE Global Summit to youth entrepreneurship competitions,
TiE chapters mentor founders and grow ecosystems year-round.(TiE
Global, TiE Global Summit, events.tie.org)
- Bengaluru Tech Summit (India, Nov 18–20,
2025): India’s flagship tech event with a strong
startup presence and global outreach initiatives.(The
Times of India)
Use August 21 as your
narrative spark—then map speaking slots, demo days, and partnership coffees at
these gatherings across the year.
Playbook: Building on safe
payment foundations
Here’s a founder-friendly
blueprint you can adapt by market.
1) Start with secure flows by
design
- Implement SCA where required (EU/UK).
Engineer your checkout to request two of three factors: something the
customer knows (password/PIN), has (device), or is (biometrics). This is
not just compliance—it lowers fraud loss and boosts trust.(Finance,
Visa)
- Adopt name-check where available. The
UK’s CoP overlay is reducing misdirected payments and is associated
with reductions in certain APP-fraud losses (as reported by industry
sources).(Pay.UK, Finextra Research)
2) Go real-time to improve cash
flow
- India – UPI: In July
2025, UPI processed ~19.47 billion transactions across 684
banks, continuing its multi-year climb. Many Indian startups use UPI
for low-cost, high-conversion collections.(NPCI)
- Brazil – Pix:
Built and operated by the Central Bank, Pix has become Brazil’s
most popular way to pay, handling over R$2 trillion monthly and
rolling out features like Pix Automático for recurring
payments—projected to drive billions in e-commerce volume.(Reuters)
- Context: Pix also shows how national payment
infrastructure can become a strategic asset—prominent enough to feature
in 2025 geopolitical debate, underscoring its scale and inclusion
impact.(Financial
Times)
- United States – FedNow:
Participation surpassed 1,400 institutions by mid-2025, with
quarterly volumes trending up as banks modernize treasury and B2B use
cases.(FRB Services,
Forbes)
- Kenya – M-Pesa: The
original mobile-money trailblazer remains a pillar of SME payments and
financial inclusion, with tens of millions of mobile-money subscribers and
meaningful revenue contribution for Safaricom.(Safaricom, Reuters)
- Singapore – PayNow: A
real-time bank-to-bank (and wallet) transfer system championed by MAS as
part of its e-payments agenda—popular with consumers and SMEs for
low-friction transfers.(Monetary Authority of Singapore)
3) Communicate trust to customers
- Display security cues
(e.g., 3-D Secure step-ups, CoP name-match screens) at the right
moments—not everywhere—to reduce anxiety without killing conversion.
- Publish a short “How we keep your money safe”
page that explains authentication, dispute handling, and
refund timelines in plain language.
- Educate on fraud patterns
(phishing, OTP sharing, fake support calls) with simple dos and
don’ts—your support team will thank you.
4) Measure what matters
- Payment acceptance rate (by
method, device, market).
- Fraud chargeback rate and
SCA step-up success.
- Refund and dispute resolution time (a
huge trust lever for first-time buyers).
- Instant-payment penetration and
average settlement time (cash-flow proxy).
Sample campaign ideas for August
21 (and beyond)
- Founder Safety Clinics:
Partner with your bank or gateway for 30-minute audits of checkout, SCA,
and refund flows.
- Co-marketing with rails: Do
a co-branded explainer—“How UPI/PIX/FedNow/PayNow helps your order
arrive faster (and safer).” Tie to local rails your customers already
use.(NPCI, Reuters,
FRB Services,
Monetary Authority of Singapore)
- “Trust Receipts” for first orders:
Auto-send a simple receipt that explains authentication, reversal windows,
and tips to avoid scams.
- GEW road to November: Run
a three-part series—“Designing trust,” “Real-time cash flow,” “Scaling
across borders”—and culminate with a pitch showcase during Global
Entrepreneurship Week.(GenGlobal)
Country snapshots: how ecosystems
blend innovation and safe ePay
India
- UPI’s rise demonstrates how interoperable,
low-cost payments can expand the TAM for digital startups. NPCI’s
official dashboard shows sustained month-on-month growth and hundreds of
banks live on UPI. Policy discussions on merchant fees (MDR) also reflect
the ecosystem’s push for economic sustainability at scale.(NPCI, Reuters)
Brazil
- Pix is now core commerce infrastructure—from
street markets to large retailers—with one-tap QR flows and new features
like Pix Automático (recurring billing). It reportedly surpassed
cards in popularity and logs record daily peaks (e.g., 252.1 million
transactions on Dec 20, 2024).(Reuters,
Global Finance
Magazine)
United Kingdom & European
Union
- CoP and SCA together
show the power of policy + industry overlays: name-checks reduce
misdirected payments and are associated with reduced fraud losses; SCA
enforces risk-based step-ups that keep cart abandonment manageable while
cutting fraud.(Pay.UK, Finextra Research, Finance)
United States
- Real-time rails are transitioning from “nice
to have” to “table stakes” as FedNow participation grows and B2B
use cases mature (invoice payments, just-in-time payroll, insurance
disbursements).(FRB Services)
Kenya
- M-Pesa remains a masterclass in
ecosystem design: agent networks + USSD + smartphones + APIs—enabling
micro-entrepreneurs, gig workers, and SMEs to transact and access adjacent
services (savings, credit).(Safaricom)
Singapore
- A highly connected city-state where PayNow
and interoperable e-wallets sit inside MAS’s broader e-payments
vision—useful inspiration for founders designing cross-border ASEAN user
journeys.(Monetary Authority of Singapore)
A founder’s checklist for Safe
ePay Day (April 11)
1.
Map your risk: List
your payment entry points (web, app, COD-to-digital, phone orders). Identify
phishing or social-engineering risks.
2.
Tune your stack: Ensure
SCA coverage (where applicable), CoP-style name-checks (where available), and
real-time options (UPI/Pix/FedNow/PayNow) in markets you serve.(Finance,
Pay.UK, NPCI, Reuters,
FRB Services)
3.
Instrument everything:
Acceptance rate, fraud rate, refund time, instant-payment share.
4.
Explain your trust policy: A short,
friendly page + order-confirmation microcopy that demystifies authentication
and refunds.
5.
Educate customers & staff: Run a
quarterly “fraud patterns” workshop; rehearse support scripts that protect
users without adding friction.
Closing thought
World Entrepreneurs’ Day (Aug 21)
champions the audacity to build. A future Safe ePay Day (Apr 11) would
champion the discipline to protect.
Founders don’t have to choose
between speed and safety—modern rails and smart regulation prove we can have
both.
Celebrate the makers today, and
commit to safeguarding their momentum tomorrow.
Because when innovation meets
protection, ideas don’t just launch—they last.
Appeal for Safe ePay Day 🌟
## Call to Action
I urge governments, financial institutions, businesses, and
communities worldwide to join hands in declaring April 11 as **Safe ePay Day**.
Let’s celebrate UPI’s milestone by making **Safe ePay Day** a
global movement for secure, innovative fintech.
Together, we can build a future where financial access is
universal, and every e-payment is safe—starting with **Safe ePay Day** in 2026.
No Vada Pav, not even one bite,
Till SafeePay Day takes off in flight.
Quirky vow with a Mumbai flair—
Announce the date, and I’ll be there!
Disclaimer:
- The only Joy is Safe ePayments. Nothing More – Nothing Less.
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