Some basic stats on India ....
“only about 15 percent of that population report ever having used a bank account in their entire lives.”
"there are 155,000 bank branches in that nation, but 600,000 towns and cities" CEO of MobileonMoney
"there are currently fewer than 20 cash machines for every 100,000 adults in India"The story basically is about the cost of POS terminals (think of the MasterCard/Nigeria story). These are needed for card-based payments (traditional & NFC).
"there are about 57.7 million merchants in India but only 1.5 million digital payment acceptance locations" PYMNTS.com
One way to avoid POS costs is to take advantage of phones (I am assuming smartphones - or at least any phone which can take a picture/scan).
So the merchant has a QR code (printed on a piece of paper say) with a merchant ID - the customer scans the QR code and initiates a push payment on their phone using Visa/MasterCard/RuPay debit/credit. So maybe the country will skip plastic cards altogether? And of course this only works for with with bank accounts. More here.