Adhil Shetty, CEO, BankBazaar.com shares his thoughts on what could help make digitisation and going cashless easier in the New Year.
In big bang reforms, the Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved a relief package for the telecom sector that includes a four-year moratorium on payment of statutory dues by telecom companies as well as allowing 100 per cent foreign investment through the automatic route. Briefing reporters on the decisions taken by the Cabinet, Telecom Minister Ashwini Vaishnav said nine structural reforms for the telecom sector were approved. The definition of AGR, which had been a major reason for the stress in the sector, has been rationalised by excluding non-telecom revenue of telecom companies.
The statutory status will provide a legal foundation to Aadhaar.
There is some hope for these companies, with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley saying there was a need for legislative backing for private companies that were using Aadhaar. Adding that a careful reading of the judgment is required, Jaitley said this could be "temporary".
Mukesh Ambani said, by March 2017, it will cover 90 per cent of India's population
In the past four months, more than 4 million new accounts have been opened, taking the total to 44.3 million.
The protocol aims to "democratise" lending, reduce costs of credit, and ensure accessibility of credit to small companies and street vendors, according to Nandan Nilekani.
'In the business of money, where you are regulated, the liability lies on the head of the acquirer.' 'It is not a good thing when you cannot spot the risks.'
Sitharaman said economic slowdown seems to have bottomed out and the coming festive season will help the economy start looking up.
Department of Financial Services is regularly emphasising the early issuance of RuPay Debit Cards, e-KYC based account opening, Aadhaar seeding, financial literacy and the progress in survey made.
The Virtual ID, which would be a random 16-digit number, together with biometrics of the user would give any authorised agency limited details like name, address and photograph, which are enough for any verification.
Priyadarshini Maji evaluates the impact that payment banks are likely to have on your financial life.
Physical KYC takes anywhere between two to five working days to get done, V-KYC, only a few minutes.
With equity and commodity exchanges allowed to enter each other's areas from October, brokerages are pump-priming their businesses to allow their clients seamless trading in commodities and equities.
Sharad Sharma, co-founder and governing council member at iSPIRT, on Tuesday admitted using anonymous accounts to troll on social media those who raised questions on Aadhaar and its applications by the government.
SC raised questions over the government's decision ordering mandatory seeding of mobile numbers with Aadhaar.
MCLR-linked loans are more responsive to RBI's rate movements, and rate cuts may be transmitted to borrowers in a manner useful to them.
Currently, only three have completed more than six months of operation in the space - Fino Payments Bank, Airtel Payments Bank and Paytm
Wipro is using this in-house innovation to automate internal functions such as helpdesk management
UIDAI has asked police to investigate, it was not fully convinced about nature of the incident
The DoT is wrongly asking subscribers to link their mobile numbers to Aadhaar in order to keep them active, says Gopal Krishna.
Telecom Secretary J S Deepak has resolved the toughest issues facing the sector, but his real test will be in delivering on the govt's Digital India dream
The KYC parameters now include declaration of the gross annual income or net worth.
Key questions remain about the operational and financial viability of a completely paperless bank such as India Post, says Mayank Jain.
Teams of students and coders demonstrated in 24 hours diverse programmes impacting health and livelihood issues with use of a personal identity number.
Absence of comprehensive data protection and privacy laws will be barriers in the government's digitalisation drive.
He said the Aadhaar programme violated informational privacy, self-determination and data protection.
The need of the hour, as the Supreme Court readies to rule on the constitutionality of Aadhaar, is for the UIDAI to fix the bugs, says Geetanjali Krishna, in the second and final part of her series.
The markets regulator made it easier for banks to acquire control in listed companies.
More people will be literate, on the Internet, linked to the national identification scheme and likely to receive electricity, especially from alternative-energy sources.
Aadhaar now has legal backing but it still faces challenges of privacy and data sharing
In order for somebody to do Big Brother kind of a job, one has to collect lots of data. Aadhaar collects very minimal data whether at the time of enrollment or at the time of authentication.
'The attempt to make Aadhaar mandatory has now emerged as an act of bullying by government agencies, turning citizens into subjects by making fundamental rights conditional on biometric identification,' says Gopal Krishna.
New offerings by banks are changing the way you transact.
While Visa and Mastercard slug it out for leadership, analysts say RuPay has the potential to cause disruption and eat into their market share.
Can we make high speed 4G Internet available at 10 cents per GB, and make all voice calls free of cost -- that too in a large and diverse country like India? Can we make high-quality but simple breast cancer screening available to every woman, that too at the extremely affordable cost of $1 per scan? Can we make a portable, high-tech ECG machine which can provide reports immediately and that too at the cost of 8 cents a test? Can we make an eye imaging device that is portable, non-invasive and costs 3 times less that conventional devices? Can we make a robust test for mosquito-borne dengue, which can detect the disease on day 1, and that too at the cost of $2 per test? Amazingly, says Dr R A Mashelkar, the eminent scientist, all this has been achieved in India, not only by using technological innovation but also non-technological innovation.
The online world is driven by convenience, simplicity and speed.
'The government that is talking all the time about national security and national interests should be concerned.' 'When national interests are jeopardised by their own project, they should pause and listen.' 'Whether it is the BJP or the Congress, they all want control over the people.' 'They don't give a damn if anything happens to the people of the country; they are only interested in what they can get out of the data.'
