Moving beyond digital payments, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the operator of Unified Payments Interface, is planning to add more muscle to the country's digital infrastructure by setting up a fourth subsidiary, NPCI Tech Solutions Ltd (NTSL).
India and Israel have elevated their relationship to a special strategic partnership, focusing on enhanced cooperation in trade, technology, and defense, while also addressing regional peace initiatives.
'Uncertainty level A in the morning, uncertainty level B in the afternoon. If I answer about tariff rates now, I'll be outdated by the evening.'
Officials from both India and the US in the recent past have indicated that a "fair deal" will be concluded soon, with Indian officials holding that more formal rounds of talks are not needed.
Google Pay, PhonePe, and Paytm may deliberately delay transactions, issue fraud alerts, and require an extra layer of user confirmation before processing any transactions that are likely to be classified as fraudulent.
India has nearly 490 million online gamers, and an estimated Rs 10,000 crore is spent every month on online gaming transactions.
'The real story of 2025 is that India officially stopped being a 'market of the future' and started acting as the world's primary economic engine.'
Mobile wallet adoption is surging in India and swiftly becoming a primary payment option, surpassing traditional methods like cash and cards. Over the next few years, payments via mobile wallets in India are likely to surpass the Rs 531.8 trillion mark in 2028, witnessing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18.3 per cent between 2024 and 2028, according to GlobalData - a London-based leading data and analytics company. The value of mobile wallet payments in India, as per a GlobalData report, grew at a CAGR of 72.1 per cent between 2019 and 2023 to reach Rs 202.8 trillion ($2.5 trillion) in 2023.
Let's work flat out and create a policy framework that fosters the growth of Indian non-family business VC and private equity firms. This will allow our Indian startups' dreams to flourish, explains Ajit Balakrishnan.
We propose an expert group be set up to form a national strategy on digital fraud. This group would bring together skills in financial regulation, security economics, cyber defence, and public communications, and an understanding of the Indian financial and security systems. It should lay the foundations of a coordinated approach by the Indian State in fighting digital fraud, suggest Ajay Shah and Nandkumar Saravade.
'United Health Interface is in line with UPI. UPI is a language of money transfer, similarly, UHI is a set of protocols, which is going to create a language of health service delivery'
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday said Parliament's Monsoon session is like a 'Vijay Utsav' as the Indian armed forces achieved their objectives under Operation Sindoor 100 per cent, and expressed confidence that the MPs will articulate this sentiment in one voice.
Out of all the reported digital payment frauds in India, over half (55 per cent) were United Payments Interface (UPI)-related, a new report released on Tuesday revealed. Another 18 per cent are card related, 12 per cent are related to internet banking and nine per cent are from phishing calls. Most of the UPI-related frauds, however, have a low ticket size.
'The next decade will be even more transformative,' says Prime Minister Modi. 'We are moving from digital governance to global digital leadership.'
With rising disposable incomes in cities beyond metros, the penetration of credit cards - and consequently, credit card spending - is growing at a much faster pace than in traditional metro cities, primarily driven by e-commerce spending.
Isn't there something significant in the UPI example for all of us to learn from and execute to enable world-scale success for our startups?, asks Ajit Balakrishnan.
Consumers can effectively make payments using UPI and other debit cards, credit cards and internet banking across 120 banks and over 120 billers, Xiaomi said.
Industry associations and companies in the United States, including the US Chamber of Commerce, Coalition of Services Industries and the iconic bike company Harley Davidson have called on the Donald Trump dispensation to push India to reduce tariffs, non-tariffs, and regulatory barriers to boost American exports.
One reason why volumes have not increased in the retail segment is that users are not aware of merchants who accept digital currency.
To increase the adoption of credit on United Payments Interface (UPI), National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is looking at an interchange fee for transactions lower than that for a credit-card transaction. Sources in the know said these charges could be 1-1.2 per cent. Fintech participants concur with the view that the interchange fee is expected to be lower than that for a credit-card transaction.
Once implemented, customers making payments using Rupay card or BHIM UPI will get a cashback of 20 per cent of the total GST amount, subject to a maximum of Rs 100.
The US Trade Representative noted that India's average applied tariff rate stood at 17% per cent, the highest of any major world economy.
In March this year, Worldline India launched Vabox (Voice Alert Box): merchants will now get instant audio alerts on the settlement of UPI (Unified Payments Interface) payments via QR codes in languages of their choice when customers check out. "They needn't worry whether the amount has been credited to their account," says Gulshan Pruthi, the firm's executive vice-president. The French payments giant will roll out 500,000 Vaboxes in the initial phase.
The average ticket size (ATS) of all transactions on United Payments Interface (UPI) in H1 2023 was pegged at Rs 1,604, marking a 10 per cent decline, compared to Rs 1,774 in H1 2022, according to data from Worldline India's Digital Payments Report. The reduction in the overall ATS on UPI is a good sign, suggesting a deeper embedding of UPI as it is being used for smaller or micro-transactions, and the dip is driven by the growth in person-to-merchant (P2M) transactions, the report said. The ATS of P2M transactions dipped 21 per cent from Rs 839 in H1 2022 to Rs 659 in H1 2023.
The NPCI has permitted non-residents from 10 countries, including the US, Canada and UAE, to digitally transfer funds using the UPI platform from NRE/NRO accounts. The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) in a circular said it has been receiving requests for allowing non-residents to use international mobile numbers for transacting in Unified Payments Interface (UPI). Accordingly, the NPCI in a circular dated January 10 has asked the UPI participants to put in place a mechanism by April 30 under which non-residents having NRE/NRO accounts will be allowed to transfer funds using their international mobile numbers.
In August, the Fed announced that it would develop a "new interbank 24x7x365 RTGS with integrated clearing functionality to support faster payments in the United States". The Fed Board asked for comments on FedNow by November. In reply to this, Google mentioned its experience of launching Google Pay -- Google's payments app which uses the UPI -- in India.
Its entry will increase competition especially when WhatsApp too has received approvals to launch payment service.
The company was awaiting clarification from the Reserve Bank of India on data storage before it took a final call on data localisation.
With vehicular activity picking pace in May, toll collection also saw a huge uptick. Fastags posted an impressive jump of more above 400 per cent in transaction count at 55.17 million, and an over-300 per cent jump in value at Rs 1,142 crore.
In a bid to check fraud, the Reserve Bank on Friday decided to permit all banks to introduce card-less cash withdrawal through ATMs.
The NITI Aayog may want us to believe this is one of the easiest payment systems in the world, but Tinesh Bhasin decodes the many unanswered queries and concerns involving the United Payments Interface.
N Sundaresha Subramanian digs deeper into what Catalyst, an Indo-US project, brings to the payments ecosystem.
Cryptocurrency exchanges face issues with their current bank accounts.
The telecom companies have also been asked to urgently improve their infrastructure, as the government aims to digitise a host of services.
Wipro will be implementing the core banking solution for Paytm.
India will grow at around 7.4 per cent in 2022-23 and continue at the same pace in the next year as well, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Friday. Sitharaman said there are risks on the external front and this is not the right time to throw caution to the wind, and also assured exporters of all the necessary support from the government as they face the headwinds. Speaking at the FE Best Bank Awards event here, Sitharaman said global agencies like IMF and the World Bank have taken cognisance of the strengths of the Indian economy by saying that it will be among the fastest growing ones in the next two years.
Speaking at a joint press event with Macron, Modi, who is in Paris on a two-day official visit, said a roadmap to strengthen India-France strategic ties over the next 25 years was being prepared with bold and ambitious goals on the anvil.
Watal panel had suggested an independent payments regulator be set up.
Despite the demonetisation of 2016 and the rise in digital transactions that followed, the economy's dependence on cash has remained as high as ever. So when the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) introduced a pilot project of its version of digital cash - called the central bank digital currency (CBDC) - on December 1, many questions were asked. Can the CBDC replace physical cash, even partially? Can it match cash in terms of convenience? Are CBDC transactions truly anonymous?
Addressing the 76th United Nations General Assembly session here, Prime Minister Modi said that today, every sixth person in the world is an Indian.