Ahead of the first due date of advance tax payment on June 15, the government is likely to release guidelines on what will be covered within the ambit of virtual digital assets (VDA). To remove any ambiguity in the recently established tax framework for asset holders, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) is currently preparing guidelines, said government officials in the know. The apex direct tax body will define non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and whether or not they fall within the purview of VDA.
The Reserve Bank on Tuesday directed digital lending entities to disclose upfront the names of of their empanelled agents authorised to contact borrowers in case of default of loan, and also intimate the details to customers before initiating the recovery process. In August last year, the RBI had tightened norms for digital lending to prevent charging of exorbitant interest rates by certain entities and also check unethical loan recovery practices. Under the new norms, all loan disbursals and repayments are required to be executed only between the bank accounts of borrower and the regulated entities (like banks and NBFCs) without any pass-through/ pool account of the Lending Service Providers (LSPs).
'The reason is that you may not enter the branch but you want to see it near you as it establishes trust.'
Call centres, once the engine room of India's BPO exports, are evolving too. Depending on the complexity, 30 to 50 per cent of voice and chat volumes are now handled by conversational AI.
Taking lessons from that, I would think seamless digital payments is something you have to clearly have a roadmap for, the FM said.
The IPPB, which is currently running pilot services in Raipur and Ranchi, needs a go-ahead from RBI for the software used for system integration
The key components of the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission include a health ID for every citizen that will also work as their health account, to which personal health records can be linked and viewed with the help of a mobile application, a Healthcare Professionals Registry (HPR) and Healthcare Facilities Registries (HFR) that will act as a repository of all healthcare providers across both modern and traditional systems of medicine.
Ride-hailing platform Uber on Wednesday said it is recruiting close to 250 engineers for its teams in Bengaluru and Hyderabad as it continues to expand the scope of operations for its engineering and product work in the country. The current round of hiring will strengthen the company's rider and driver growth, delivery, eats, digital payments, risk and compliance, marketplace, customer obsession, infrastructure, adtech, data, safety and finance technology teams, a statement said. These roles are currently split between the company's Hyderabad and Bengaluru tech centres, it added.
Aided by robust demand, automobile retail sales in India rose by 11 per cent last year as compared to 2022, dealers' body FADA said on Monday. The overall domestic automobile retail sales stood at 2,38,67,990 units in the 2023 calendar year as compared to 2,14,92,324 units in 2022. Passenger vehicle sales stood at 38,60,268 units last year, up 11 per cent from 34,89,953 units in 2022.
Having issued over 21 lakh cards since lifting of curbs last year, the country's largest private sector lender HDFC Bank is planning to launch a slew of digital initiatives over the next few quarters, a top official said. The Reserve Bank had barred HDFC Bank from issuing new credit cards following incidents of outages in the lender's internet banking /mobile banking/ payment utilities over the previous two years. The curbs were partially lifted after eight months in August last year. Finally, in March 2022, the RBI lifted all restrictions placed on the bank, including digital launches.
The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has granted approval to Paytm to onboard new UPI users, subject to the adherence to all procedural guidelines and circulars, according to the company. The move is expected to come as a relief to Paytm, which had suffered a blow following the Reserve Bank of India's restrictions earlier this year on associate company Paytm Payments Bank Limited (PPBL) in onboarding new UPI users on the Paytm app. In March, the NPCI gave approval to Paytm to participate in UPI as a Third-Party Application Provider (TPAP).
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.
RuPay National Common Mobility Card's offline wallet can be used to make ticket payments in transit, including in metros, cabs, etc, enabling automatic, quick, cashless payments.
Now, 83 per cent males and 77 per cent females have formal bank accounts but they are hardly using them
There has been a 45 per cent growth in 'active internet users' in rural India since 2019, according a study by Nielsen, a global company for audience measurement, data and analytics. The Bharat 2.0 Internet report said that female active internet users grew by 61 per cent since 2019. The report said that India has 646 million active Internet users aged 2 years and above as of December 2021. Rural India has 352 million internet users--almost 20 per cent higher than urban.
'Similar to the case of the digital payment system where the government created a public platform and others joined in, we are exploring a similar structure to create a PPP platform where the compute required for AI could be accessed by the small player.'
The small finance bank model may still be testing the water some 10 years since its launch. According to banking experts, the regulator has taken a cautious approach in granting approvals. Unity Small Finance Bank was the last one to get a licence in the category in November 2021.
Dream11, Baazi Games, Zupee and WinZO among others are invited for the discussion with the anti-money laundering watchdog.
The ministry will engage 30 young graduates, postgraduates and PhD-holders in the fields of urban planning, urban design, engineering, information and technology, urban mobility, finance, social sector, and environmental issues.
Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) chairman Mukesh D Ambani on Wednesday said the latest reforms and relief measures will enable the telecom sector to achieve goals set under the Digital India mission. The Cabinet has announced several reforms for the telecom sector, including redefining adjusted gross revenue (AGR) that will now include revenues earned only from telecom services. The government calculates various levies on AGR. "The telecom sector is one of the prime movers of the economy and the key enabler for making India a Digital Society, I welcome the Government of India's announcement of reforms and relief measures that will enable the industry to achieve the goals of Digital India. I thank Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) for this bold initiative," Ambani said.
The size of the Indian financial services market could touch around $340 billion in the next few years.
In the Union Budget for Financial Year 2023-24 (FY24), Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had held forth on the need for better governance and investor protection in the banking sector. She had proposed certain amendments to the Reserve Bank of India Act (RBI Act), 1934; the Banking Regulation Act (BR Act), 1949; and the Banking Companies (Acquisition and Transfer of Undertakings) Act, 1970.
Google on Friday said it is deferring the deadline for developers in India to integrate with its Play billing system from March 2022 to October next year. In October last year, the company had announced March 31, 2022 as the deadline for developers in India to integrate with Play's billing system. A Google spokesperson on Friday said the extension has been done in view of the changes to India's recurring digital payments guidelines.
One reason why volumes have not increased in the retail segment is that users are not aware of merchants who accept digital currency.
The private corporate sector showed improvements across various segments in the third quarter of the current financial year (Q3FY25), with the operating profit margin of listed non-financial companies increasing sequentially by 50 basis points (bps) to 16.2 per cent, according to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data released on Monday. Sales of listed private non-financial companies increased by 8.0 per cent during Q3FY25, compared to 5.5 per cent in the corresponding quarter a year ago. It was, however, 5.4 per cent in Q2FY25.
The message is clear: The 60-year-old wise uncles need to handhold the 40-year-old entrepreneurs when, obsessed with ambition and greed for growth, they become a victim of hubris, points out Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
rediffGURU Vipul Bhavsar answers readers' personal income tax queries.
Shares of One97 Communications (OCL), which provides financial services under the brand 'Paytm', and has a banking arm Paytm Payments Bank (PPBL), hit the 5 per cent upper circuit at Rs 428.10 on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) in Monday's (February 26) intraday trade. The up move in the stock on Monday came after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) asked the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), in post stock market hours, to look into the possibility of migrating PPBL customers, using the UPI handle '@paytm', to four-to-five other banks.
As part of its efforts to strengthen customer protection, Reserve Bank is considering setting up a fraud registry to create a database of fraudulent websites, phones and various modus operandi used for digital fraud. Such a database will help prevent these fraudsters from repeating the fraud as the websites or phone numbers would be blacklisted, RBI executive director Anil Kumar Sharma said on Monday. "There is no definite timeline for setting up of the fraud registry.
Bharti Airtel on Wednesday announced a new corporate structure to sharpen the company's focus on rapidly unfolding digital opportunities while enabling it to unlock value. The move comes at a time when digital is turning out to be a compelling proposition for players in the Indian market, where the use of smartphones and better broadband connectivity has spurred the adoption of a new range of services. Players are positioning themselves beyond the core telephony offerings, as they enhance digital engagement, build future streams of revenue and create brand differentiation, besides redefining themselves as a larger platform of digital services, say market watchers.
Digital-pay companies see 10x growth spurt after demonetisation, report Ayan Pramanik & Shine Jacob/Business Standard from Bengaluru.
The country's largest lender State Bank of India has seen a perceptible increase in the number transactions happening at its multiple digital channels, with the percentage moving from 60 per cent in the pre-pandemic period to 67 per cent currently, chairman Dinesh Khara said. The rise in the number of digital transactions at the bank was largely driven by pick up in e-commerce during the pandemic-induced lockdown, which restricted movement, he said.
'We are running this initiative to find good job opportunities for military wives, which should be remote because then they can stay with their husbands and be part of the corporate world,' Supriya Parashar tells Prasanna D Zore/Rediff.com.
The regulator said that it is vested within its purview to regulate the bank account for payment systems and the settlement systems are finally posted in the books of account of banks with the RBI to attain settlement finality.
The stocks are largely from sectors such as chemicals, finance and cement, which struggled earlier but the worse seems to be behind them.
Borrowers should be careful if the app promises too-quick disbursal, and doesn't provide adequate information on the terms of the loan, such as interest rate, repayment schedule, etc.
Will allowing business correspondents to hawk insurance products help in reviving 5-lakh strong field agents as a viable channel?
Walmart-owned digital payments app Phonepe on Thursday said it has raised $350 million at a valuation of $12 billion in a funding round led by private equity firm General Atlantic. "Marquee Global and Indian investors are also participating in the round," PhonePe said in a statement adding the investment marks the first tranche of an up to $1 billion total fundraise that commenced in January 2023. The fundraise follows PhonePe's recently announced change of domicile to India and full separation from Flipkart.
Days after the government said the Reserve Bank will introduce a digital currency in 2022-23, Governor Shaktikanta Das on Thursday said the central bank does not want to rush and is carefully examining all aspects before introduction of the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). He, however, declined to give any timeline for the launch of the CBDC. In her Budget 2022-23 speech, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced that the RBI will introduce a digital currency in the next financial year beginning April 2022 to boost the digital economy and for more efficient currency management.
