Digital Payments

Credit card growth does not conflict with real-time payment systems, but complements them and offers consumers more payment options

This new feature could be seen as a substitute for credit card, which has limited reach, experts say

"It is now necessary to assess the cumulative impact of our action taken so far"

UPI is an instant real-time payments system that allows users to transfer money across multiple banks without disclosing bank account details

Surge in digital payments in the past few years has highlighted the need for banks to raise the capacity of their digital platforms

Axis Bank in partnership with Visa on Monday launched an app that will empower merchants to accept payments through various digital modes and also enable them to manage their day-to-day business digitally. The app 'Digital Dukaan' has been specifically designed to address business requirements such as accepting digital payments, inventory management and billing, among others, Axis Bank said in a statement. This Android Smart POS application has an in-built camera with LED flashlight that will enable scanning of product barcodes, allow tap and pay option for transactions up to Rs 5,000 and also support other value-added services such as EMI, acceptance of Sodexo card, Buy Now Pay Later, etc, it said. Digital Dukaan will also enable merchants to set up an online store and grow their business effortlessly by creating new channels, the bank said.

"India is looking to evangelise its successes in digital public infrastructure through its G20 Presidency to all 133 nations that do not yet have fast digital payments"

The government may consider a 0.3 per cent uniform digital payment facilitation fee to fund the infrastructure required for such transactions and also to ensure financial viability of the UPI payment system, suggested a study by IIT Bombay. The facilitation fee of 0.3 per cent can generate around Rs 5,000 crore in 2023-24, said the study titled 'Charges for PPI-based UPI payments--The Deception'. The study, which analyses the impact of the decision of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to introduce interchange fee on payments through mobile wallets, argued that the payments received by merchants should remain 'unpolluted' whether they are from UPI directly or through prepaid e-wallets. The NPCI, with effect from April 1, 2023 introduced an interchange fee of 1.1 per cent on transaction amount for usage of prepaid payment instruments for making payments through UPI to merchants. These will apply on prepaid wallet-based UPI merchant transactions. Rather than thrusting

"This is about spreading India's soft power and also enabling Indian private sector, which is well versed in these technologies, to get business opportunities abroad," a second senior official said

"The RBI's reply was revealing and unnerving...Just as the digital economy is soaring, the fraudsters and scamsters on the prowl in the virtual world are becoming bolder," said Sarda

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said India's digital payments ecosystem has radically transformed governance, financial inclusion and ease of living in the country

Speaking about India's central bank digital currency (CBDC, also known as e-rupee), Sankar said the RBI was looking to expand the use cases for wholesale CBDC

India-Singapore link is an encouraging first step

UPI-PayNow linkage world's first to feature cloud-based infra

The country's largest private sector lender HDFC Bank on Monday said it is attempting to execute digital payments in an offline mode under a regulatory facility to test innovations. Apart from executing transactions in no network areas, such a facility will be of help in urban pockets experiencing bad networks and also in aircraft, according to a statement. It can be noted that there is a facility which helps users with feature phones undertake Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions. HDFC Bank has begun the pilot in a partnership with Crunchfish, IDFC Bank and M2P Fintech under the RBI's regulatory sandbox programme after getting the nod in September 2022, it said. The lender will roll-out this service as part of a limited pilot for four months in more than 16 cities and towns across the country. The offline transaction amount would be limited to up to Rs 200 per transaction. Digital payment typically requires one either the customer or the merchant to be online to get ...

The minister further said that that Mission Bhashini - National Language Translation Mission and Digital Payments have come together to make UPI 123 Pay available in the local language

Faster adoption and acceptance of digital payments in India if transaction charges levied by the banks on digital payments is waived and a Digital Payments Regulation Board is constituted.

Fintech firm mPokket on Wednesday said that an app impersonating it has been blocked by the government and it has no partnership with the blocked platform. The government has last week ordered blocking of 232 apps operated by overseas entities, including Chinese, for being involved in betting, gambling and unauthorised loan service "The domain in the list issued by MeiTY this week, mpokket.en.aptoide.com, is a clear instance of impersonation and has no affiliation with mPokket whatsoever. Aptoide is a third-party app store with which we have no official or unofficial partnership," mPokket said in a statement. Meity issued blocking orders on Saturday based on an emergency request issued by a nodal officer of the home ministry comprising 138 betting and gambling websites and 94 loan apps that were engaging in illegal money laundering and posing threat to financial security of the country. "We suspect that it may be a proxy app on Aptoide and are looking into it further. Blocking of s

Sebi has notified rules asking all market intermediaries and companies to make regulatory payments to it by way of direct credit into the bank account through digital payment systems. Under the rules, market intermediaries and companies are required to pay various fees to the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi). In a notification, Sebi said that the fee can be paid to the regulator by way of direct credit into the bank account through digital payment systems -- NEFT (National Electronic Funds Transfer), RTGS (Real-Time Gross Settlement), and IMPS (Immediate Mobile Payment Service) -- or online payment using the Sebi Payment Gateway. To give these effects, the regulator has notified Sebi (Payment of Fees and Mode of Pay). The amendment has been brought into various regulations with respect to fees to be paid to Sebi. Last month, the market regulator clarified that all payment mechanisms provided by banks and payment aggregators authorised by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)

Digital payments across the country registered a growth of 24.13 per cent in a year through September 2022, as per RBI's index that measures the adoption of online transactions. The newly-constituted RBI's Digital Payments Index (RBI-DPI) stood at 377.46 in September 2022 against 349.30 in March 2022 and 304.06 in September 2021. "The RBI-DPI Index has increased across all parameters driven by significant growth in payment infrastructure and payment performance across the country over the period," Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said in a statement on Tuesday. The central bank had announced the construction of a composite RBI-DPI in March 2018 as a base to capture the extent of digitisation of payments across the country. The index comprises five broad parameters that enable the measurement of the deepening and penetration of digital payments in the country over different periods. These parameters are Payment Enablers (weight 25 per cent); Payment Infrastructure Demand-side factors