The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's (Trai's) latest push to review its existing spam regulations and expand the definition of "commercial communications" is driven by an urgent need to tighten controls on autodialers or robocallers, and bulk messaging, according to official sources. This move, they said, comes in response to a surge in complaints against unregistered telemarketers (UTMs), which soared to 750,000 in just the first half of 2024, underscoring the necessity for a comprehensive overhaul of the government's anti-spam measures. Last week, Trai released a consultation paper aimed at revisiting the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, 2018 (TCCCPR-2018), the government's legal framework against spam.
Any forced attempt to achieve anything, however lofty the goal, will result in distortions and undesired outcomes, say Anshuman Gupta and Karunakar Jha.
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.
A key indicator of corporate efficiency may now be better than at any time since the turn of the millennium. The net working capital cycle - a crucial measure that tracks the time a company takes to convert current assets like inventory into sales and then collect the money from customers - has seen remarkable improvement. According to data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), the average company needed nearly 90 days to complete this cycle in 1999-2000.
Cadient clients are spread across pharmaceutical, biotechnology, consumer health and medical device industries.
One reason why volumes have not increased in the retail segment is that users are not aware of merchants who accept digital currency.
The swindled amount is nearly half of WazirX's total assets.
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.
Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud on Thursday advised market regulator SEBI and the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) to exercise caution amid a significant surge in equity markets and pitched for more tribunal benches to ensure that the "backbone is stable". Inaugurating the new SAT premises here, CJI Chandrachud pitched for authorities to consider opening up new benches of the SAT given the higher workloads because of higher quantum of transactions and newer regulations.
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.
These directions on enhancing security of card transactions will come into effect from March 16, 2020, as per the RBI notification.
Paytm, the country's leading fintech player which had to shut its payment bank business following regulatory action, is revisiting its business strategy including partnership with lenders. Also, the company's founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Vijay Shekhar Sharma has decided to oversee the day-to-day operations with all the major verticals reporting directly to him now. "The thing on top of everyone's agenda is getting the core businesses back on track," a person in the know said.
Electronic transactions are rising fast, so are cases of payment failure and delayed settlement. One needs to be proactive.
'Just the amount of work which is there just to become more and more successful in banking. For this to happen you need to have leaders who understand technology.'
A new schedule has been added to report income from cryptocurrencies and other Virtual Digital Assets.
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.
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.
Digital-pay companies see 10x growth spurt after demonetisation, report Ayan Pramanik & Shine Jacob/Business Standard from Bengaluru.
The regulatory gap between crypto firms registered with the Financial Intelligence Unit-India (FIU-India) and unregistered offshore entities is expected to narrow, industry players said, after global crypto players Binance and KuCoin received approvals to register with India's anti-money laundering unit.
The jury is still out on the decision to demonetise high value currency notes on November 8, 2016, with the government claiming it has helped greater formalisation of the economy while critics saying it has failed to curb black money and reduce dependence on cash. On November 8, six years ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced the demonetisation of old Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 banknotes and one of the key objectives of the unprecedented decision was to promote digital payments and curb black money, besides eliminating terror funding. As per a Reserve Bank data, currency with the public has jumped to a new high of Rs 30.88 lakh crore an October 21, indicating that cash usage is still substantial even six years after the demonetisation move.
Retailers in the food, grocery and fashion retail segments to be unaffected
The filing of Swiggy's DRHP has led to direct comparisons with Zomato, which is a direct competitor in food delivery and the fast-growing quick-commerce segment where Blinkit (owned by Zomato) faces off against Instamart (and Zepto). In Q-commerce, Flipkart, Amazon, Reliance and Big Basket are all entering the space. All of them have deep pockets, hence competitive intensity will rise going forward.
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.
Mahindra & Mahindra on Thursday said it has tied up with a unit of Adani Total Gas to establish electric vehicle charging infrastructure across the country. The auto major and Adani Total Energies E-Mobility Ltd (ATEL) have inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in this regard. The MoU sets a roadmap for the creation of an expansive EV charging infrastructure across the country, it added.
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.
With over 80 million Unified Payments Interface (UPI) users, Amazon Pay, the payments business of e-commerce giant Amazon, has been growing at 40-50 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y), said Mahendra Nerurkar, chief executive officer (CEO) and vice-president (V-P), Amazon Pay India. "Leveraging just the micro peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions on UPI is not a business model. "While we have enabled those features, we do not chase monthly active users based on this.
Its entry will increase competition especially when WhatsApp too has received approvals to launch payment service.
The Competition Commission of India has introduced draft regulations for combinations or mergers, under the new competition Act, to bring global deals in the digital space, including those involving Big Tech companies, under its scanner. The draft regulations would provide guidance on the valuation of merger transactions and the criteria for assessing sustainable operations in India for companies. The proposed rules mention that if the number of users and subscribers, or the turnover or gross merchandise value in India is over 10 per cent of the global figure, the company would be considered to have substantial business operation in India and would need CCI approval for the merger.
RBI data on Dec 2014 showed 1.05 million PoS machines in the country.
WhatsApp to foray into digital payments & expand to other markets
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.
Numbers could be classified further into (140) marketing and (160 or 161) for service calls to easily identify the purpose of the call in the future.
The Supreme Court in a 4:1 majority verdict upheld the government's 2016 decision to demonetise Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 denomination notes, saying the decision-making process was not flawed.
Branch additions for most major banks in the current financial year do not correspond to the number of the past two years.
Cash withdrawal limits likely to continue
The Commission has desired to incorporate Aadhaar-based fingerprint authentication (else digital fingerprint capturing) and facial recognition of candidates, scanning of QR Code of e-admit cards and monitoring through live AI-based CCTV video surveillance, it said.
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 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.
