The race to get a New Umbrella Entity (NUE) licence for digital payments may get crowded. As many as six consortiums are said to be in the fray to apply for an NUE licence, which would create a for-profit National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI)-like body for retail payments. A consortium led by Financial Software and Systems (FSS), a leading provider of payment products and payment processor, is in talks and may file an application to the RBI for an NUE license, said sources aware of the development. The other constituents of this group include Indian Bank, Central Bank of India, India Post Payments Bank, National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard), and a few small finance banks.
N Sundaresha Subramanian digs deeper into what Catalyst, an Indo-US project, brings to the payments ecosystem.
Ultimately, the choice between no-cost EMI and BNPL depends on an individual's financial situation, preferences, and ability to manage repayments responsibly.
As in the past, it is up to the merchants to decide if they will bear the burden of the charge or bill it to the customers. Subhomoy Bhattacharjee reports.
Going by the RBI directive and the overall narrative, Paytm may have lost the rigour of stress tests, audits and compliance.
While a wallet is convenient, payments bank offers interest on deposits and ATM facility.
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.
Fintech firm MobiKwik on Monday filed a draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) with the markets regulator, Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), for its initial public offering (IPO). According to its DRHP, the company plans to raise Rs 1,900 crore, which includes a fresh issue of Rs 1,500 crore and an offer for sale of Rs 400 crore. The selling shareholders include American Express Travel, Bajaj Finance, Cisco Systems and Sequoia Capital India, besides founder Bipin Preet Singh. MobiKwik is the latest among tech majors wanting to list on stock exchanges. Food delivery start-up Zomato will launch its IPO on Wednesday.
Sources close to the development told Business Standard the company was exploring different ways to save on its employee costs and had laid off a few employees on "performance" grounds. "We will see a similar development for the next few months. "The company is fine-tuning its hiring policies and implement rigourous measures to look into employee performance," a source said.
Unbanked customers can expect easier access to banking.
At the heart of Paytm's slide lies the abject failure of its Super App strategy, notes Indrajit Gupta.
'A credit line on UPI is going to make banks think about credit fundamentally as they digitise the credit process entirely.'
The government on Monday proposed income tax benefits for people making payments through credit or debit cards and doing away with transaction charges on purchase of petrol, gas and rail tickets with plastic money.
Most public sector banks, flush with deposits now, offer 3-4% interest on savings deposits, while a few private sector banks go up to 6%.
Electronic transactions are rising fast, so are cases of payment failure and delayed settlement. One needs to be proactive.
A platform that helps retailers reduce failed transactions while keeping the cost down, Innoviti is all set for India's digital payments revolution.
The start of BHIM's declining share coincided with the launch of Google Tez in mid-Septem
Startup founders need to sit up and think about how not to take stardom for granted and how not to disappoint their fans who have stood in long queues for those precious selfies with popular entrepreneurs, notes Nivedita Mookerji.
'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.'
One reason why volumes have not increased in the retail segment is that users are not aware of merchants who accept digital currency.
To increase the adoption of credit on United Payments Interface (UPI), National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is looking at an interchange fee for transactions lower than that for a credit-card transaction. Sources in the know said these charges could be 1-1.2 per cent. Fintech participants concur with the view that the interchange fee is expected to be lower than that for a credit-card transaction.
Do not trust any incoming phone calls or mails that ask you to install any file or programme, warns Niranjan Upadhye, general manager-fraud risk management, Worldline India.
According to data from Venture Intelligence, PEs invested in two mobile payment solutions firms each in 2009, 2010 and 2011. This grew to four deals in 2012 and five deals in 2013.
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.
In the wake of scrapping of old Rs 500/1,000 banknotes, Niti Aayog has asked National Payments Corporation of India to frame a new scheme to incentivise digital payments.
...benefiting 350,000 persons. Also, Trai detected and blocked seven million mobile phone connections involved in cyber fraud and suspicious activities.
There will be no charge for RuPay credit card use on Unified Payments Interface (UPI) for transactions up to Rs 2,000 in line with the RBI direction, a recent NPCI circular said. RuPay credit card has been operational for the last four years, and all major banks are enabled and are issuing incremental cards for both commercial and retail segments. "During credit card on-boarding on the apps, the device binding and UPI PIN setting process shall include and be construed as customer consent for credit card enablement for all types of transactions," the circular dated October 4 said.
Its entry will increase competition especially when WhatsApp too has received approvals to launch payment service.
Customers would be able to make money transfers, pay utility bills and recharge their mobile and DTH connections with just one click and a single PIN entry
Cheque payments will be safer; the limit for contactless card transactions hiked.
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 RBI on April 6 directed all payments service providers to make sure "that the entire data relating to payment systems operated by them are stored in a system only in India."
WhatsApp's advantage is that it is the first app millions of Indian check first thing in the morning and innumerable times during the day and night.
Dismissing the petitions, a bench headed by Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma said Google Pay is "mere third-party app provider" which requires no authorisation from RBI under the Payments and Settlement Systems Act.
Has Vijay Shekhar Sharma given up on the bank? For now, he seems to be on a save-OCL mission. The bank will face its logical end, observes Tamal Bandopadhyay.
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.
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.
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.
Apple Pay will be available in 250,000 locations across the UK.
Paytm founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Vijay Shekhar Sharma will receive his stock grants only after the company's market capitalisation (m-cap) stabilises at its initial public offering (IPO) level, the financial technology (fintech) major said on Wednesday. Paytm's stock price has been in free fall since its IPO at Rs 2,150 apiece, with m-cap at around Rs 1.4 trillion - plunging 76 per cent to a lifetime low of Rs 520 on March 23, when m-cap dropped below Rs 34,000 crore. Since then, the company's share price on the BSE has recovered some value and closed at Rs 637 on Wednesday.