The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has relaxed card-on-file data storage norms pertaining to guest transactions checkout, whereby now, apart from the card issuer and the card network, the merchant or its payment aggregator involved in the settlement of the transactions can save the data for a maximum of T+4 days or till the settlement date, whichever is earlier. And, acquiring banks have been permitted to store the card-on-file data until January 2023 for handing other post-transactions activities. The industry reached out to the RBI on the issue and sought a solution.
HDFC Bank, the country's largest private-sector lender, lost to competition wholesale loans of around Rs 50,000 crore after it increased interest rates in May, said Chief Financial Officer Srinivasan Vaidyanathan in an analyst call. "There were some customers who were offered lower rates by other market participants. "But we decided not to cut back on our rates," he said while addressing analysts after the announcement of the bank's Q1 earnings.
After the finance minister directed public sector banks to join the account aggregator (AA) ecosystem, 5-6 major ones, including State Bank of India (SBI) and Bank of Baroda are expected to go live by July-end. Sahmati, an industry alliance for the AA ecosystem, has been working with PSU banks to get them onboarded for quite some time now. So far, Union Bank of India and Punjab National Bank (PNB) have gone live on the AA ecosystem. While Union Bank has been live for a while, PNB went live earlier this month.
'We try to pick up stocks early and hold onto them for the long term.' 'We are not someone who buys and sells on a daily basis.'
A strong demand for diesel SUVs has bumped up the contribution of these variants to Hyundai Motor India's sales to a three-year high, a company top official told Business Standard. The local arm of the South Korean carmaker has benefitted after some leading manufacturers - including car market leader Maruti Suzuki - pulled the plug on diesel models amid tightening regulations. Hyundai has also gained from the changing travel preference -people are frequenting getaways and taking to the road a lot more than what they did before the pandemic. This trend has been fuelling overall SUV sales.
The recent currency volatility - rupee's depreciation against international currencies - may have given heartburns to automakers that rely on imports or pay royalty to parent companies abroad. But for Maruti Suzuki India, favourable movement of the yen - the currency that matters the most - against the Indian rupee, has given it reasons to cheer. The yen's sharp fall against the rupee and the rupee's depreciation against the US dollar, which in turn will bump up export realisations, are set to give a margin boost to the maker of Baleno and Brezza, said analysts. The softening of commodity prices and slew of new SUV launches in the coming months will also aid margins, they said.
The depreciation in rupee may pose a problem for students who have taken loans from Indian lenders.
The Reserve Bank of India's (RBI's) recent decision to allow credit cards for payments through the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is likely to attract a merchant discount rate (MDR), said a top payment industry source. For smaller merchants, a subsidy for MDR could be provided. "With credit card-UPI linkage, UPI will not only be a payment instrument but also a lending platform. "How can banks lend without a commercial model? Also, the government has said MDR will be zero for payment products but not for lending products," the source said, indicating the MDR regime for credit card-linked UPI payments.
Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) is setting up a greenfield tractor plant in Mohali near Punjab. Fueled by a strong domestic demand, the expansion is the first in a decade by the world's largest tractor maker. In 2012, the company had set up a facility at Zaheerabad in Telangana.
While commercial vehicles are expected to benefit from strong replacement demand, the two-wheeler and tractor segments are expected to gain from a recovery in the rural economy.
Automobile manufacturers, new and old, as well as ancillary suppliers are set to spend a combined Rs 70,630 crore over the next five years on either entering the electric vehicle segment or stepping up their presence in it. Data culled from announcements made by firms shows India, the world's fifth largest automobile market, is poised to receive one of the biggest capex pushes ever to fuel the transition from internal combustion engines to electric motors and batteries as part of a green drive. The EV push, egged on by the government's emphasis on electric mobility to meet its net zero targets, is expected to yield at least 25 electric vehicles - new ones as well as electrified versions of existing vehicles running on internal combustion engines.
A day after the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI's) Monetary Policy Committee hiked the policy repo rate by 50 basis points (bps), several commercial banks, including ICICI Bank and Bank of Baroda, raised their external benchmark-linked loan rates by an equal amount on Thursday. HDFC, the country's largest mortgage lender, too, increased its interest rates on housing loans by another 50 bps. In total, it has raised rates by 85 bps since May 4, when the RBI had increased the repo rate by 40 bps in an off-cycle meeting.
After a two-year lull, the deal pipeline in India's hospitality sector, which has witnessed a strong revival since the second wave of the pandemic receded, is running full. Family offices, high net-worth individuals (HNIs) and institutional investors are looking at the sector with renewed interest, according to investment and transaction advisory firms working on multiple deals. Most of them declined to divulge details of the deals for reasons of confidentiality. The cumulative debt of the tourism, hotels and restaurant sector rose 8.2 per cent year-on-year (YoY) to Rs 64,408 crore as of March 25, 2022 against Rs 59,519 crore on March 26, 2021, according to the Reserve Bank of India.
The economy segment of India's car market is unlikely to revive soon term as inflation and prices prompt buyers to defer purchases. The share of entry-level cars in the passenger vehicle market dropped to the lowest in seven years at the end of the Financial Year 2021-22 (FY22). A recovery in the segment will be largely driven by the overall economic growth, improvement in income levels, and easing of semiconductor shortage, say carmakers and analysts.
Spending through the credit card in March 2022 jumped 48 per cent year-on-year to top Rs 1 trillion -- five months after it had hit the same figure for the first time in October 2021, buoyed by festive season expenditure. The jump has been driven by the pickup in consumption as the pandemic recedes. Expenditure in March, at Rs 1.07 trillion, was up 24.5 per cent over February, the data put out by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) showed.
Technology giant Apple has informed its customers in India that it will no longer store their card information on file and will not be accepting payments made by debit cards and credit cards for purchases or subscriptions on the App store or other Apple services. The decision has been taken by the US-based company in view of the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI's) card data storage guidelines, which will kick in from July 1. The deadline for implementing these norms was extended twice.
Recently, TPEM's first born electric concept, Avinya broke cover. The model promises a minimum range of 500 kilometres and advanced technology features, aimed at buyers in India and outside. TPEM, the newly formed entity may also consider a separate dedicated sales channel for the EVs with a distinctive corporate identity once the volumes reach a critical mass and throughput is large enough for the dealers to be profitable, said Chandra. Elaborating further on the hiring strategy he said, "We will hire from everywhere-wherever the talent of the required competency is available."
So far at least eight incidents of EV fires have been reported in just over a month's time.
'Had there been no war, maybe, we would come out with a 7.5 per cent stake sale.' 'At this point in time, a 3.5 per cent stake sale looked good.'
Defying trends, the country's largest private sector lender, HDFC Bank, has shifted its asset mix significantly towards high-rated segments. As a result, its wholesale-to-retail mix has tilted heavily in favour of wholesale, even at the cost of margins. Further, it is even looking to ramp up its branch network, with an aim to service clients within a 1-2 km radius rather than the current 5-6 km radius.
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