'During times of adversity, a brick becomes better than a stone. That is how I look at the election season.'
Of the eight RBI governors who have held office since the 1991 economic liberalisation, Bimal Jalan had the longest stint and S Venkitaramanan, the shortest. Current Governor Shaktikanta Das will overtake Bimal Jalan before completing his second term in December, points out Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
The company was awaiting clarification from the Reserve Bank of India on data storage before it took a final call on data localisation.
Airports across the country witnessed chaotic scenes on Friday after dozens of flights were either delayed or cancelled after a widespread global computer outage that also hit operations like cash withdrawal at some banks, and impacted functioning of some brokerages. Globally, the Microsoft cloud outage led to US airlines cancelling flights, but the tech giant later reportedly said its cloud services outage in the Central US region has been resolved.
WhatsApp's ambitious payment services' blueprint in India has been caught in a bind over concerns around authentication and its data storage practices.
Do not trust any incoming phone calls or mails that ask you to install any file or programme, warns Niranjan Upadhye, general manager-fraud risk management, Worldline India.
This facility will be available for cost reduction forex option structures in which the liability of the buyer will not exceed the net premium payable to the bank, RBI said in a notification.
The start of BHIM's declining share coincided with the launch of Google Tez in mid-Septem
Passengers in 200 railway stations across India will soon be able to recharge their mobiles, pay electricity bills, fill up Aadhaar and Pan card forms and even file taxes with help from Common Service Centre (CSC) kiosks to be set up by RailTel. The scheme has been operationalised in partnership with CSC e-Governance Services India Limited' (CSC-SPV) and the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, RailTel said in a statement. The kiosks will be run by village level entrepreneurs (VLEs).
Banks have also been asked to keep records of all disbursals and drawers will have to submit a list person to whom payments will be made out of the funds
Credit outstanding to the housing sector rose by nearly Rs 10 lakh crore in the last two fiscals to reach a record Rs 27.23 lakh crore in March this year, according to RBI's data on 'Sectoral Deployment of Bank Credit'. Experts from banking and real estate sectors attributed this growth in housing credit outstanding to a strong revival in the residential property market post-COVID pandemic on pent-up demand. According to the data of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on sectoral deployment of bank credit for March 2024, the credit outstanding to the housing (including priority sector housing') stood at Rs 27,22,720 crore in March 2024, up from Rs 19,88,532 crore in March 2023, and Rs 17,26,697 crore in March 2022.
While HDFC Bank has vowed to recoup its lost market share in the credit card segment in three to four quarters by aggressively sourcing new cards, brokerages believe it is a little hard to come by, given how competitive the landscape has become, with other players in the market becoming equally aggressive to gain market share. Kotak Institutional Equities in its report on Monday said, "We would like to believe that the recovery in market share is likely to be gradual, if any. "All the key players, including Axis Bank, are now willing to expand their credit card portfolios as they have tested quite well against Covid-19."
'If you give your ID and password to somebody else, how can anybody blame the technology for that problem?'
The Reserve Bank on Friday accepted most of the recommendations of its working group on corporate ownership of private sector banks, by allowing unrestrained promoter shareholding in the first five years of operations and hiking the same to 26 per cent after 15 years from the extant 15 per cent and also the new capital requirements. The move will benefit leading banks like Kotak Mahindra Bank and IndusInd Bank, among others, which have been seeking more time from the regulator to divest their stakes for many years now. Accepting 21 of the 33 recommendations of the internal working group, the central bank said the remaining suggestions are under its consideration.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday announced that income from digital asset transfers will be taxed at a rate of 30 per cent. This move is seen as 'crypto tax'.
Customers who possess gold jewellery but are either being denied a personal loan or are being asked for a high interest rate due to their poor credit profile may consider a gold loan.
This payment of Rs 962 crore is inclusive of the Rs 500 crore DHFL received from exiting its entire stake in subsidiary firm Aadhar Housing Finance Ltd.
Agarwal, a real estate developer, was arrested under sections 75 and 77 of the Juvenile Justice Act, while the others were booked for allegedly serving alcohol to an underage person.
If Indian companies were people, around 20 per cent of the listed space would be individuals whose salaries don't cover their loan instalments.
Here are the highlights of the monetary policy announced by RBI governor Shaktikanta Das on Friday.
rediffGURU and financial planning expert Colonel Sanjeev Govila (retd) answers your personal finance-related questions.
Banks have raised concerns over the new international trade settlement in rupee, fearing that facilitation of such a mechanism could result in them facing the ire of economic sanctions by the West, people aware of the matter said. Large banks with overseas operations have sought clarity and assurance from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) that they will not be targeted with sanctions for facilitating rupee trade with a sanction-hit country such as Russia. The present payment mechanism is a shift from earlier such arrangements, like the one with sanction-hit Iran, which involved banks facilitating settlement of international trade that did not have business in the sanctioned nation.
'There will be partnerships between banks and fintech firms, but there will also be areas where they will be direct competitors.'
The regulator said if the variable pay is up to 200 per cent of the fixed pay, at least 50 per cent of it should be in non-cash, and if the variable pay is above 200 per cent, 67 per cent of it should be paid via non-cash instruments.
'Tax is not required to be deducted from specified payments if a recipient files a self-declaration with the deductor for no deduction of tax.'
Debit card payments remained sluggish due to the surge in digital transactions after the pandemic, and the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has emerged as the most popular mode of money transfer, particularly for small value transactions, according to RBI data. In July 2020, the total debit card spends stood at Rs 2.81 trillion, as compared to Rs 3.15 trillion in July 2023, reflecting a growth of 11.96 per cent. UPI spends have seen a whopping growth of 428 per cent, zooming from Rs 2.90 trillion to Rs 15.33 trillion during the same period, the data revealed.
Consensus remained elusive on a common BRICS currency as business leaders from the five-bloc nations debated the pivotal issue at a business forum on the periphery of a summit of the five-member bloc being hosted here by South Africa. In their two addresses at the Summit so far, the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa have made no or scant references to the issue either. "The BRICS Business Forum discussed the international payments system in detail. "Participants also debated the question of whether a BRICS currency is possible or desirable, with strong views expressed both for and against and little consensus reached," Sim Tshabalala, chief executive of Standard Bank Group, told several hundred captains of industry from the partner countries and over 40 other nations across the globe at the Summit.
While bank credit growth seems to be showing signs of revival, deposits could soon emerge as the new area of concern for bankers.
The transition to UPI-based ATMs will be gradual, and consumers will not immediately switch to using standalone UPI ATMs overnight.
National Payments Corporation of India is currently in the process of testing sound-based payments with three companies: PhonePe, ToneTag and UltraCash.
rediffGURU Samkit Maniar answers readers' personal income tax queries.
Investors may have to wait a little longer for Unified Payments Interface (UPI)-based block mechanism in the secondary market even as the market regulator has set the effective launch date as January 1, 2024. Several brokerage firms said they may take a few months more to implement it. Investors will be able to register for this facility only if the stock broker has opted for the UPI block facility.
'Try to obtain a secured personal loan or credit card by offering some collateral, such as a fixed deposit or gold.' 'Not only will this improve your eligibility, but the lender may even offer a lower interest rate.'
The need to maintain people's confidence in digital banking resulted in the action against HDFC Bank for service outages, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said on Friday and exhorted lenders to invest more on the technology front.
Funds raised by banks through certificates of deposit in December clocked the highest in the financial year 2023-24 as liquidity remained tight in the system with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) infusing Rs 2.01 trillion on Monday, the highest in the current financial year. The liquidity deficit in the banking system widened to more than Rs 2 trillion on Monday on the back of advance tax outflows, market participants said. Around Rs 4 trillion worth of outflows are expected because of advanced tax and goods and services tax (GST) payments in December.
The Aam Aadmi Party dismissed the allegation as "baseless" and claimed it was "another conspiracy hatched by the BJP" to tarnish AAP's image ahead of voting for Lok Sabha seats in Delhi and Punjab.
Special judge for Central Bureau of Investigation cases Kaveri Baweja took note of the charge sheet on Monday observing that there was sufficient evidence to proceed against her in the case.
Citing various macroeconomic parameters that are doing pretty well, India's G20 Sherpa and former CEO of Niti Aayog Amitabh Kant projected that the country is all set to overtake Japan as 4th largest economy in the world by 2025. The size of India's GDP is currently ranked 5th, after the US, China, Germany, and Japan. It overtook the UK in 2022.