A Course on Digital Payments

An undergraduate course offered at IIIT Allahabad to the students of BTech (Business Informatics)

Credits: 3, (Jan-April 2022)

Component 1

Unit 1: Introduction

• History & Evolution of Payment 

• Currency: Characteristics, Trust, Law

• Role of Computer Science in the Evolution (Cryptography, Internet)

• Requirements of a Payment System vis à vis Digital Payments

Unit 2: Prevalent Monetary Setup: Pros & Cons

• Banks, Central Banks, IMF: Roles, Responsibilities, Intervention tools

• Global Financial System: Bonds, Pegging

• Networks: SWIFT (Settlement), Visa, MasterCard (Credit)

• Interplay of Government, Inflation, Central Bank

• Case Studies (Argentina, Zimbabwe)

• Towards a Digital Payment System: Requirements 

Component 2

Unit 3: Digital Payment Ecosystem

• Hoarding of metadata (privacy implications)

• UPI, NACH, e-RUPI: ecosystems in India

• Private Currencies (Utility & Limitations)

• Micro-payments (case studies)

Unit 4: Privacy & Regulations

• IT Law, PDP Act, GDPR

• PCI-DSS Compliance

• AML, Fraud Detection

• Privacy vs Convenience

• Privacy as a Currency

Component 3

Unit 5: Bitcoin & Blockchains

• Cryptocurrency (vis à vis Digital Currency): Bitcoin Design

• Blockchains: Ledgers, DLTs (permissionless vs permissioned networks)

• Limitations of Cryptocurrencies

• CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency): Case Studies

• Regulatory Sandbox for Cryptocurrency and DeFi

Unit 6: Future of Payment Systems

• Programmable Money: Stablecoins, Tokens, NFTs

• Open Banking Initiatives

• Local Currencies (Private Currencies anchored on Public Currencies)

• P2P Banking: Shifting of Trust & Risk, Regulatory sandbox, Limitations

• Circular Economies: Role of Cryptocurrencies

References

1. https://www.nielit.gov.in/content/digitalpayments

2. https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/paymentsystem201009en.pdf

3. https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/money-and-payments-20220120.pdf

4. https://www.scss.tcd.ie/~htewari/4D1/papers/payment.pdf

5. https://dea.gov.in/sites/default/files/watal_report271216.pdf

6. https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/files/brainard20200205a.pdf

7. https://towardsdatascience.com/the-growing-impact-of-ai-in-financial-services-six-examples-da386c0301b2

8. https://www.bis.org/publ/qtrpdf/r_qt2003j.pdf

9. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1906.11078.pdf

10. https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

11. https://www.chaum.com/publications/Chaum-blind-signatures.PDF

12. http://euro.ecom.cmu.edu/program/courses/tcr763/2004/Slides/money1.ppt

13. http://euro.ecom.cmu.edu/program/courses/tcr763/2004/Slides/banking2.ppt

14. http://usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/ec95/full_papers/camp.ps

15. http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/1510/atomicity_camp.pdf?sequence=1

16. https://www.giac.org/paper/gsec/1799/overview-e-cash-implementation-security-issues/103204

17. https://www.bis.org/cpmi/publ/d190.pdf

18. https://insa.nic.in/writereaddata/UpLoadedFiles/PINSA/2018_Art22.pdf