Nearly 665 million Indians or 45 per cent of the rural population did not have access to the internet as of 2023. Difficulty in understanding internet procedures, insufficient awareness of its benefits, and a lack of interest have emerged as the top reasons for a gap in internet penetration in rural India, according to a joint report by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and Kantar. "The proficiency of English in rural India is very low. While we have content in Hindi, the internet is English-heavy.
These directions on enhancing security of card transactions will come into effect from March 16, 2020, as per the RBI notification.
A Cabinet note is expected to be moved to use Aadhaar numbers for electronic Know Your Customer verification of mobile subscribers.
The project is expected to be activated by the end of this month.
Cadient clients are spread across pharmaceutical, biotechnology, consumer health and medical device industries.
National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) on Wednesday said there is no charge for the bank account to bank account-based UPI payments or normal UPI payments.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley should not drop the ball on continuing the battle against black money and move towards digital transactions to reduce the preponderance of cash in the economy, says A K Bhattacharya.
The government will develop a mechanism to ensure that e-commerce companies and entities that have adopted Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) architecture are compliant with the rules. Non-compliance may result in a penalty. "We will have our own evaluation system, and if we find any player is not sticking to it, then we will take action. "Participants will have to be compliant with the rule of the land," Sanjiv, joint secretary at the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), told reporters on Thursday.
'Mumbai main branch (SBI headquarter) has all the data ready-made. It doesn't take even an hour to out the data from the system.'
Canada-based Brookfield will acquire the Indian business of American Tower Corporation (ATC) for an enterprise value of $2 billion, a release said on Friday. The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals and expected to close in the second half of 2024. "Data Infrastructure Trust (DIT), an Infrastructure Investment Trust sponsored by an affiliate of Brookfield Asset Management, today announced the signing of an agreement with ATC to acquire 100 per cent of equity interests in American Tower's operations in India (ATC India), for an enterprise value of Rs 16,500 crore ($2 billion) which is subject to pre-closing terms as per the securities purchase agreement," it said.
In a bid to provide a level playing field, the government has decided not to levy 2 per cent digital service tax if goods and services are sold through Indian arm of foreign e-commerce players.
Electronic transactions are rising fast, so are cases of payment failure and delayed settlement. One needs to be proactive.
The information technology services sector will see a sharp fall in revenue growth to 12-13 per cent in FY23 from 19 per cent in FY22, ratings agency Crisil said on Thursday. However, the current depreciation in the rupee, strong demand for new age technologies like artificial intelligence, cloud computing and Internet of Things will help the over $220-billion sector maintain a double digit growth, it said in a report. The moderation from 19 per cent to 12-13 per cent will be the highest in the last eight years, it said and attributed the decline to expected tightening of IT expenditure by corporates amid the inflationary headwinds in the United States and European Union (EU), which together contribute almost 85 per cent to the sector's revenue.
Microsoft has become the first global Big Tech company to join the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), an Indian government initiative for developing a first-of-its-kind open network for digital commerce. The world's second-largest technology firm intends to introduce social e-commerce via its app in the Indian market later this year. ONDC is expected to open to the public in Bengaluru over the next fortnight as it enters into the next phase of the pilot for further fine-tuning before rollouts in other cities, according to a source in the know.
LIC Housing Finance (LICHF) delivered a healthy FY24 with improvements in net interest margin (NIM) and credit costs and an improved return on assets of 1.7 per cent compared to an average of 1.3 per cent between FY14-FY23. Loan growth was low due to technology upgrades to the platform in H1FY24, though momentum improved in H2FY24. In Q4FY24, the net interest income (NII) came in at Rs 2,250 crore.
The number of frauds in the banking sector during the first half of the current financial year has increased substantially to 14,483 cases, although the amount involved is only 14.9 per cent of the previous year's amount, according to a RBI report. The report on Trend and Progress of Banking in India 2022-23, underlined the need to protect the banking system and the payments system from the risks of fraud and data breaches emanating from cyber threats. As many as 14,483 frauds were reported involving an amount of Rs 2,642 crore in the first half of current financial year, as compared to 5,396 cases (Rs 17,685 crore) in the same period a year ago.
Modi said people used to believe that the rich and powerful were not affected by anti-corruption drives and asserted that it was no longer true.
Its entry will increase competition especially when WhatsApp too has received approvals to launch payment service.
Digital-pay companies see 10x growth spurt after demonetisation, report Ayan Pramanik & Shine Jacob/Business Standard from Bengaluru.
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.
In order to provide an impetus to digital funds movement, it has been decided to do away with the charges levied by the RBI for transactions processed in the RTGS and NEFT systems, RBI said.
The prime minister said gradually people are "shedding their hard currency mindset" and moving towards digital currency and the youth are leading the way using their mobile phones as the new tool to make and receive payments.
The Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) new rules for credit and debit cards came into effect from October 1. These include tokenisation, one-time password (OTP) for activation after 30 days, written permission for enhancement of credit limit, and greater clarity on interest calculation.
TDP supremo N Chandrababu Naidu consistently emphasises, among others, the issue during his campaign, alleging that the state has been supplying poor quality liquor while profiting immensely from 'inflated' prices, running to thousands of crores of rupees.
Retailers in the food, grocery and fashion retail segments to be unaffected
The size of Reserve Bank's balance sheet increased by 11.08 per cent to Rs 70.47 lakh crore as on March 2024, leading to the highest-ever dividend payout to the government, according to the central bank's annual report. In actual terms, the increase was Rs 7,02,946.97 crore over Rs 63.45 lakh crore as on March 2023.
Airtel CEO Gopal Vittal on Thursday warned about a rise in cyber frauds amid a massive surge in online transactions during the second wave of the pandemic, and asserted the company is working "relentlessly" and coming out with safety features to ensure customers are not vulnerable to fraudsters. In an e-mail outreach to customers, Vittal highlighted the modus operandi being adopted by fraudsters and also drew attention to cyber frauds related to digital payments. "With the growing second wave of the pandemic and lockdowns in various parts of the country, there has been a massive increase in online transactions. "Unfortunately, there has also been a corresponding increase in cyber fraud," Vittal said.
The Bombay high court has passed an ex-parte interim order restraining several entities from operating websites etc claiming to provide PAN card services on behalf of the government-owned UTI Infrastructure Technology and Services Limited (UTIITSL) and noted such an act poses a "national level threat". A single bench of Justice Bharati Dangre, in its order of January 12, said the Union government has made it mandatory for PAN card holders to link the same to their Aadhar Card, which is an acceptable proof of identification. Therefore, any potential misuse of the licence/ authorization to issue PAN cards would be highly detrimental not only to the interest of the company but also to national interest, the HC said.
Yes Bank on Saturday reported over two-fold jump in standalone net profit at Rs 452 crore for March quarter 2023-24, primarily due to benefits on the provision front. In the year-ago quarter, the bank logged a profit of Rs 202.43 crore. The private sector lender benefitted from write-back on income tax and interest on income tax returns, but the profits were limited by its inability to comply with the mandatory priority sector lending (PSL) requirements, its management said.
Apart from SBI, UPI 2.0 partner banks are HDFC Bank, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, IDBI Bank, RBL Bank, YES Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, IndusInd Bank, Federal Bank and HSBC.
Generative artificial intelligence (AI), climate tech and fintech sectors will be the hot areas for venture capitalists and founders in the next year, according to the prediction by Prashanth Prakash, founding partner of the global venture capital firm Accel Partners in India and the chairperson of Karnataka Startup Vision Group. Prakash said that about $25 billion has been invested into building Gen AI globally. But a lot of that capital has not yet come to India, opening up huge opportunities for startups in the country.
RBI data on Dec 2014 showed 1.05 million PoS machines in the country.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) recently said no entity in the card transaction or payment chain, apart from the card issuers and card networks, will be allowed to store sensitive user data from January 1, 2022. Instead, in transactions card data will be converted to tokens.
WhatsApp to foray into digital payments & expand to other markets
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.
Branch additions for most major banks in the current financial year do not correspond to the number of the past two years.
Reliance Industries Ltd on Monday announced an agreement to invest alongside Brookfield Infrastructure and Digital Realty in special purpose vehicles developing data centres in India. Reliance will hold a 33.33 per cent stake in each of the five Indian special purpose vehicles and become an equal partner, the company said in a statement. Digital Realty Trust, Inc is the largest provider of cloud and carrier-neutral data centre, colocation and interconnection solutions globally with 300+ data centres across 27 countries.
Nearly two million e-mandates for recurring payments have been registered with banks and card networks after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) made it mandatory from October 1 to take prior consent of a customer before debiting her account, sources in know of the matter said. Industry estimates peg the recurring transactions at approximately 2.5 per cent of the total volume of transactions, and about 1.5 per cent in terms of value. Of these, around 75 per cent of domestic recurring transactions, and about 85 per cent international recurring payments are below Rs 5,000.
'What's sad today is that there are so many people who cannot find work, not because the country is devoid of that opportunity, but because we are not doing enough in the country.'
Sitharaman said surcharges on individuals having taxable income of Rs 2 crore to Rs 5 crore; and Rs 5 crore and more have been raised.