'Credit card debt comes with high interest cost and stringent penalties.' 'If you do not repay on time, the costs balloon.'
As quick commerce gains ground, emerging direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands are betting big on digital channels to drive growth. According to Aman Gupta, co-founder of wearables brand BoAt, new-age brands in India have been expanding at a much faster pace than expected, driven by digital channels like quick-commerce. "Investors doubted the potential of D2C brands when we started, but today there are multiple brands in the startup market that are growing on the shoulders of these digital channels," Gupta said while addressing a session at Razorpay's D2C and Retail Summit recently.
The average cost of data breaches in India reached $2.18 million in 2023, marking a 28 per cent increase since 2020, according to the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) Currency and Finance report for 2023-24. The report said that India's average data breach cost was still below the global average. The most common attacks in India are phishing which was at 22 per cent and stolen or compromised credentials was 16 per cent. The automotive industry is highly vulnerable to cyber attacks, whereas the banking and financial services sector, benefiting from stringent regulations, enjoys comparatively stronger protection.
'The impact of CBDC on deposits and deposit insurance is largely unknown.'
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharman on Monday held a performance review meeting with heads of public sector banks and asked them to make concerted efforts to garner deposits. Deposits have been growing 300-400 basis points lower than the credit growth in the last few months, creating an asset-liability mismatch for banks. During deliberations on the deposit mobilisation, she said that while the credit growth has picked up, mobilisation of deposits could further be improved to fund the credit growth sustainably, and asked banks to make concerted efforts to garner deposits by conducting special drives.
Coal-to-airports conglomerate Adani group is set to make a splash in the tech world. The group is considering the creation of customised artificial intelligence (AI) models for commercial prospects and consolidating digital services on a super app, according to people in the know. The Adani One app, part of its consumer-facing businesses, is reportedly in talks to expand into e-commerce and digital payments, according to a Financial Times report.
Reserve Bank of India on Friday said NPCI has been asked to examine the possibility of it becoming a third party application provider for continued UPI operations of the Paytm app. The central bank has barred Paytm Payments Bank from accepting further credits into its customer accounts and wallets after March 15, 2024.
Financial technology (fintech) firms PhonePe and BharatPe announced on Sunday that they have settled long-standing legal disputes regarding the use of the trademark with the suffix 'Pe' in their brand names. The settlement concludes five-year-long legal disputes across multiple courts. Both companies have decided to withdraw all opposition against each other in the Trade Marks Registry.
Reserve Bank of India governor Shaktikanta Das on Monday said payments through UPI (unified payment interface) have grown exponentially in the past 12 months with daily transactions crossing 36 crore, which is up 50 per cent from 24 crore in February 2022. In value terms, these transactions are worth Rs 6.27 lakh crore, registering a growth of 17 per cent from Rs 5.36 lakh crore in February 2022, the governor told reporters while launching the Digital Payments Awareness Week at the RBI headquarters in Mumbai this afternoon. He also said the overall monthly digital payment transactions crossed over Rs 1,000-crore-mark each month during the past three months.
'Compare the new slabs with the previous years to understand if your tax liability will increase or decrease after the Budget.'
The finance ministry expects a broad-based moderation in inflationary pressures on the back of an anticipated reduction in food prices as a result of the uptick in summer sowing. The retail inflation rate remained stubbornly clung to the 5 per cent mark in seven of the past eight months. "Core inflation is trending downwards, indicating a broad-based moderation in price pressures... Driven by strong domestic growth and benign global commodity prices, core inflation is declining continuously.
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.
To check digital frauds, the government has disconnected 70 lakh mobile numbers so far involved in cybercrime or financial frauds, Financial Services Secretary Vivek Joshi said on Tuesday. Emerging from a meeting to discuss issues related to financial cyber security and increasing digital payment fraud, Joshi, who chaired the meeting, said banks have been asked to strengthen the system and processes in this regard. More such meetings would take place, he said, adding the next meeting is scheduled in January.
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.
...benefiting 350,000 persons. Also, Trai detected and blocked seven million mobile phone connections involved in cyber fraud and suspicious activities.
FSN E-Commerce Ventures (Nykaa) hosted its annual investor day recently. The responses were positive from analysts. Although some analysts pared FY25 and FY26 estimates, the bulk continued to issue 'buy' calls after the stock rose 2.5 per cent. The management expects the Beauty & Personal Care (BPC) business to grow at a 25 per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) during FY24-28.
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.
'We went from zero to about 10 million users in three months. Paytm came out with the wallet play and we came out with the UPI play.'
Walmart-owned fintech firm PhonePe said it has crossed 500 million lifetime registered users on its platform. With this milestone, 1 in 3 Indians are now on PhonePe. The company said it is the first Indian internet company to have reached this scale globally. This milestone has been achieved in just over 7 years since the PhonePe UPI (Unified Payments Interface) payments launched in August 2016.
Indian fintechs and associated entities are hoping that the Union Budget 2024 will provide a boost and empower firms to extend their reach beyond Tier-II regions, with an emphasis on supporting enterprises led by women. The fintech industry, which has witnessed regulatory reforms over the last year, expects the Budget, scheduled to be presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on February 1, will further encourage financial inclusion, empower micro-small-medium enterprises (MSMEs) with lending solutions, and push for upskilling initiatives for the country's young workforce.
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.
Fintech firm One97 Communications, which owns the Paytm brand, has received support from merchants, and it assured them of continuity of services without any disruption, the company said in a blog on Sunday. The blog post came amid the recent crisis around Paytm Payments Bank Limited (PPBL), an associate company of Paytm, which has been barred by the RBI from accepting deposits or top-ups in customer accounts, wallets, FASTags and other instruments after February 29.
Why are financial-technology (fintech) players moving back to India, or doing the reverse-flipping?
The net direct tax collection so far this fiscal rose 19.41 per cent to Rs 14.70 lakh crore, reaching about 81 per cent of the full-year target, the income tax department said on Thursday. "The provisional figures of Direct Tax collections up to January 10, 2024, continue to register steady growth," the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said in a statement. Direct Tax collection, net of refunds, stood at Rs 14.70 lakh crore which is 19.41 per cent higher than the net collection for the corresponding period of last year.
The Centre on Sunday said there are no plans to levy charges for making payments through Unified Payments Interface (UPI) while saying the service is a "digital public good with immense convenience". The ministry of finance said the concerns of service providers for cost recovery have to be met through other means. "UPI is a digital public good with immense convenience for the public & productivity gains for the economy.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday expressed hope that G20 will draw inspiration from the vibrancy of the Indian economy and work towards bringing back stability, confidence and growth on the global landscape.
'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 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.
In the backdrop of the crisis brewing at Paytm Payments Bank, major fintech companies are ramping up their workforce and inducting new faces in their leadership teams, industry sources said on Wednesday. Users will not be able to add funds to their Paytm Payments Bank Wallet after February 29, though they will still be able to use the services and the existing balance in the wallets, according to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) diktat. Industry sources said that competitors to Paytm are investing heavily in offline payments while doubling their salesforce.
'The West has always opposed a strong nationalist leader in India and Narendra Modi is no exception.' 'The West prefers weak leaders who are amenable to Western pressure and Mr Modi's independent stance is not to the liking of the West,' asserts Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
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.
At Rs 30.88 lakh crore, the currency with the public is 71.84 per cent higher than the level for the fortnight ended November 4, 2016.
...and say bye to the humanities-science divide, says Ajit Balakrishnan.
Private sector banks reported the maximum number of frauds in 2022-2023.
Reserve Bank Governor Shaktikanta Das on Friday stressed that the monetary policy must remain actively disinflationary to ensure that the decline in inflation from its peak of 7.44 per cent in July continues smoothly. Addressing the Kautilya Economic Conclave 2023, he also said price stability and financial stability complement each other and it has been an endeavour at RBI to manage both efficiently. Retail inflation declined to a three-month low of 5.02 per cent annually in September on account of moderation in vegetables and fuel prices, and was back within the Reserve Bank's comfort level.
Unified Payments Interface (UPI) clocked over 6 billion transactions in July: the highest ever by India's flagship digital payments platform since its inception in 2016. UPI reported 6.28 billion transactions amounting to Rs 10.62 trillion, according to data released by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which operates the platform. Month-on-month, the volume of transactions was up 7.16 per cent and value increased 4.76 per cent.
Messaging platform WhatsApp on Wednesday said it has rolled out a pilot program across 500 villages across Karnataka and Maharashtra, aimed at empowering villagers with access to digital payments through 'payments on WhatsApp'. The announcement was made at Fuel For India 2021 - Meta's annual event in India. WhatsApp India Head Abhijit Bose said the pilot aims to effect a behavioral transformation to digital payments at the grassroots.
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.
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.
'In the next 15-20 years, India will have at least 50 new (AI-driven) billion-dollar companies that are going to solve problems for the largest companies around the world.'
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