As much as 20 per cent of the gross merchandise value (GMV) of sales made on e-commerce platforms is being financed through the no-cost EMI route, up from 4-5 pc two years ago.
The government is planning to extend the electronic modes of tax payment to its own payments platform, Unified Payments Interface (UPI), credit cards of banks, or even a mobile wallet like Paytm.
The race to get a New Umbrella Entity (NUE) licence for digital payments may get crowded. As many as six consortiums are said to be in the fray to apply for an NUE licence, which would create a for-profit National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI)-like body for retail payments. A consortium led by Financial Software and Systems (FSS), a leading provider of payment products and payment processor, is in talks and may file an application to the RBI for an NUE license, said sources aware of the development. The other constituents of this group include Indian Bank, Central Bank of India, India Post Payments Bank, National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard), and a few small finance banks.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is in India this week and is expected to meet top government functionaries, business leaders and SMBs.
Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday said India is a very special and important country with a remarkable entrepreneurship culture, as he sought to push deeper the just-launched payments services that allow users to make payments over WhatsApp. Last month, Facebook-owned WhatsApp received approval from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) for rolling out its payments services in India. In 2018, WhatsApp started testing its UPI-based payments services in India -- a global first -- with about a million users.
Having grown swiftly since the acquisition of Flipkart by Walmart in 2018, it was looking at a valuation of $10 billion. However, factors such as lack of diversification, new e-commerce and data policies, as well as the overall investment environment, have slowed the process.
After a gruelling 24 hours, the PhonePe team has fully restored UPI on the payment platform. The app is up and running again with ICICI Bank as its new partner with all payment instruments enabled.
Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp has secured regulatory approval for launching its digital payment platform -- WhatApp Pay -- in a phased manner, close to two years after the US-based company's pilot run.
The latest infusion brings the total capital pumped into Amazon's e-commerce business in India to Rs 22,390 crore
The report, however, did not include sales of Flipkart's subsidiaries Myntra and Jabong.
UPI transactions are growing faster, but wallets remain relevant for those without a bank account and seeking cashbacks.
Readying its game plan, the Bengaluru-based e-commerce giant plans to renew talks of investments in various companies such as Swiggy, BookMyShow, Pepperfry, UrbanClap
Over the last 12 months, thanks to bold bets by venture capital firms like Sequoia, SoftBank Vision Fund, and foreign strategic investors like Naspers, pipeline of start-ups with potential to achieve $1 bn in valuation is at an all-time high.
The last few months have been hard on digital wallets which had a short-lived dream run post-demonetisation.
Digital transaction players are hurriedly drawing up a memorandum to be taken to the central bank in hope of having a few of the guidelines -- such as full Know Your Customer (KYC) compliance in 12 months -- overturned, reports Karan Choudhury
Experts say the new guideline is likely to hurt foreign players more, especially card companies such as Visa, MasterCard and American Express who process and store credit card transaction data outside of India.
While most banks in India store all this data on Indian servers in their core banking systems, the current directive addresses new-age payment and fintech companies operating in the space
'India missed the software products revolution (and now is in danger of missing the platform revolution), complacent that we are the software experts of the world based on IT services prowess,' points out Rajeev Srinivasan.