SBI Ties up With Greenply to Offer Financial Services to its Dealers
State Bank of India has announced a tie-up with Greenply Industries to grow its channel financing business. This deal allows SBI to take yet another step in growing its digital banking footprint. SBI is planning to create a digital-only bank platform to allow transactions to be done with the help of apps, internet banking and mobile banking. Read More |
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Airtel Payments Bank to Sell Insurance, MF Products
Airtel Payments Bank (APB) is planning to sell third party financial products to boost its revenue from other income category. MD and CEO of APB Shahshi Arora said, “we plan to sell insurance and MF products through our network in near future. After that, we will also offer loan products of other entities like NBFCs as we are not allowed to do lending directly”. Starting operations few months ago, the bank had already opened 2.5 lakh banking points across the nation with a total customer base of two million spread across geographies. Read More |
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Banking on Aadhaar without Bank Accounts via IndiaPost Payments Bank can be a Real Game-Changer
Aadhaar-based transactions by people even without a bank account through the IndiaPost payments bank’s Aadhaar-pay model could be the real game-changer. This is what IndiaPost payments bank is striving to establish as its basic model once it starts operations in the next few months. According to its CEO A P Singh this can change the face of financial transaction in the country, especially in the rural areas where post offices can play a big role in promoting financial inclusion and handling direct benefit transfers (DBT), which is still around Rs 50,000 crore in a year. Read More
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Government allocates Rs 500 crore to India Post Payments Bank for financial-year 2017-18
Government has allocated Rs 500 crore to India Post Payments Bank for financial year 2017-18 as it gears up to set up 650 branches across country by September 2017. Government has allocated Rs 125 crore as “capital infusion into corporate entity for India Post Payments Bank” and Rs 375 crore as “grant in aid to India Post Payments Bank (IPPB)”, as per Output-Outcome Framework for Schemes 2017-18 for the Department of Posts . Read More |
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Mobile Payments to Overtake Physical Card Spends in 2017
Mobile and digital payments will overtake physical card payments as the predominant non-cash payment mode in India in 2017, driven by demonetization. The possibility has been expressed by Deloitte India in its report titled ‘Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) Predictions 2017’. According to the report, Demonetisation has forced a behavioural change in the Indian consumer. While FinTechs used the ‘carrot’ approach to entice customers to switch behaviour and adopt digital payments, demonetisation employs a more draconian ‘stick’ approach, which may prove to be more effective. Read More |
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Digital Payments Industry to Hit $500 Bn by 2020: GSMA-BCG
BCG Research has reported that Digital payments industry in India is expected to reach USD 500 billion by 2020, with over 50% of Internet users in the country will be using it by then. BCG estimates that in India, digital technologies will influence up to 45 percent of all retail sales by 2025. Read More |
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American Express Introduces New Payment Method for Digital Vendor Payments
American Express, a global payment solutions provider, announced the launch of Buyer Initiated Payments (BIP), an electronic payment platform linked to Corporate Card that reduces processing costs and offers extended payment terms compared to traditional invoice payments. BIP enables companies to increase the Days Payable Outstanding (DPO) while still paying vendors on time. Read More |
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Oracle and Mastercard to Deliver Seamless Payments
At Mobile World Congress, Mastercard today announced a global partnership with Oracle that is designed to deliver a streamlined digital payment experience to the retail and hospitality industries. The partnership will initially focus on three needs for restaurants, hotels and retail stores:
- In-Store Experience
- Operational Efficiencies
- Cross-Channel Consistency
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Visa Expands Global Payments, Partners with IBM Watson on IoT
Visa is widening its global payments capabilities, announcing its mVisa QR-based payment service will be available in seven new countries to provide simple, secure point-of-sale (POS) and e-commerce transactions. Visa has partnered with IBM Watson on Internet of Things (IoT) payments technology. The mVisa service gives merchants the ability to quickly accept payments via QR code. Consumers link their Visa debit, credit, or prepaid account to the mVisa mobile app, and upon scanning a merchant’s QR code will immediately transfer funds to the retailer’s account. “In India and these countries, there are many street vendors on the side of the road and the telephony infrastructure isn’t as developed as the rest of the world, so these vendors have jumped straight to mobile,” explained Avin Arumugam, Senior Vice President of Internet of Things for Visa. Read More |
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Swift Reveals Future Global Payment Tech – Blockchain Not Included
After months of testing, Swift (the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication), the interbank payments platform that connects 11,000 global banks, has formally launched the system it believes will be the future of its cross-border payments services. As part of the formal rollout, Swift revealed that 12 of the world’s largest banks have been conducting real-time transactions via its Global Payments Innovation (GPI) project for some months. Although Swift plans to continue its experiments with blockchain for other applications. Read More |
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Mahindra Comviva Launches Biometric Payments Solution for Rural Indian Merchants
Mobile financial solutions firm Mahindra Comviva has launched PayPlus Aadhaar Pay, a merchant payment acceptance solution designed for rural India that will enable merchants to accept in-store payments through Aadhaar numbers and biometric-based authentication. The solution requires a biometric device to be linked to [a] merchant’s mobile phone for payment authentication. However, customers do not need a phone at all. Read More |
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PayPal Moves into Bill Payments with TIO Acquisition
PayPal is looking to steal a march on financial services firms in the underbanked bill payment space by acquiring North American processor TIO for $233 million. Dan Schulman, president and CEO of PayPal, says: “By acquiring TIO and integrating bill payment into our global payments platform, PayPal adds another key service in our efforts to become a part of a consumer’s everyday financial life. Worldwide, more than 2 billion people do not have affordable access to basic financial services, making it difficult and expensive for consumers to carry out basic financial tasks, including bill payment. TIO’s digital platform, and physical network of agent locations make paying bills simpler, faster, and more affordable.” Read More |
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Paytm Lines up Rs 600 Crore for QR Code Payments Solution
In a bid to further capitalize on the gains made due to demonetization, Vijay Shekhar Sharma-led Paytm plans to invest Rs 600 crore in the next 10 months to develop a QR code-based payments solution. The company is also planning to train 10 million merchants to accept digital payments across 650 districts by December. Read More |
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Freedom from PoS: BharatQR Launched to Make Retail e-Payments More Seamless
Payment networks such as MasterCard and Visa have joined hands with NPCI to launch BharatQR, a common Quick Response(QR) code that would enable seamless digital payments without card swiping machines. BharatQR is a revolutionary step as it provides an interoperable solution. Merchants will be identified by one QR code whether the payment is through MasterCard, Visa or RuPay and would result in deepening of acceptance infrastructure in the country. Read More |
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Education Tech to Now Get Personalized
A new initiative that promises to harness education technology to improve personalised learning and instruction, especially in engineering subjects has been launched by the University of Southern California (USC). The focus of the project in which two prominent Indian origin technical professionals feature will be to bring education and engineering together. Read More |
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Backwater Tourism Plans Fail to Take Off
The grandiose plans chalked out by the District Tourism Promotion Council (DTPC) to introduce a houseboat and two tourist boats in the Kochi backwaters have failed to materialize. The DTPC’s executive committee had approved the proposal to operate a houseboat (kettuvallom) in the Ernakulam-Muziris sector, a year ago. The agency had roped in a houseboat owner to jointly operate his vessel, with the DTPC being primarily responsible for marketing. Sources cited delay in obtaining clearances from government departments as the reason for the initiative failing to kick off. “We cannot afford to own and operate a house boat. The cost would come to over ₹40 lakh, while wages of crew members too will have to be met. Carrying out repairs too would be cumbersome since obtaining sanction for funds is time consuming,” they said. Read More |
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Rich in Monuments, Punjab Gets a Tourism High: From 28th Spot to 12th in Eight Years
Eight years ago, Punjab ranked 28th on tourist arrivals in the country, but now it’s placed at the 12th spot. According to the Union ministry of tourism, the tourist arrivals in the state have more than doubled with the number of domestic tourists going up from 1.05 crore in 2010 to 2.57 crore in 2015, and the number of foreign tourists shooting up from 1.37 lakh to 2.42 lakh in the corresponding period. Read More |
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Dubai Looks to China, Russia for Tourists as Part of Strategy
Dubai is “focussed on a much bigger set” of markets as part of its strategy to ensure that its goal to host 20 million travellers by 2020 is not affected by factors that are not in its control. India, however, maintained the number one spot for the second consecutive year in terms of the number of people travelling to Dubai. India had become number one key source market for 2015 and they have maintained the number one position for the second year now. Read More |
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Rs 2400 Crore to be Invested in next 5-yrs to Promote Tourism in J&K
The Centre along with the Jammu and Kashmir government will be investing Rs 2400 crore over the next five years to give a boost to tourism in the picturesque state with a focus on unexplored and new regions like Kargil. There are many historical sites across the state which are yet to be explored. The govt have urged tour operators (from Maharashtra also) to promote such regions (including Kargil) in their packages. Read More |
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Research: China FinTech Booms as Mobile Payments Outpace US by 50x
New research has shown that Chinese mobile payments were around 50 times greater than those within the U.S. in 2016, thus illustrating that China’s FinTech market is a strong contender in the market. Chinese third-party mobile payments more than tripled in 2016 to $5.5 trillion. WeChat Pay and Alipay, operated by Ant Financial, dominated the market. Recent research found that Alipay received the biggest investment in 2016 at $4.5 billion as FinTech funding increased in China. Read More |
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Singapore Fintech investment Down 65% in 2016: KPMG
In 2016, there was a 65% drop in overall investment in Singapore-based fintech companies, down from US$605 million to US$214 million, according to a KPMG International study Pulse of Fintech. KPMG noted that in Singapore, many of the larger VC fundings were concentrated among online payments, remittances or foreign exchange trading platforms. Read More |
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Bharti Airtel Picks up Stake in Fintech Startup Seynse
Bharti Airtel has acquired a strategic stake in Goa-based financial technology startup Seynse Technologies Pvt. Ltd. Bharti Airtel plans to use Seynse’s capabilities to bring targeted products and solutions to its more than 270 million customers. Read More |
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Global Fintech Investment Declines in 2016: Report
KPMG has reported that total Fintech funding in 2016 declined to $24.7 billion from $46.7 billion in 2015. VC funding to fintech companies reached a record $13.6 billion compared to 12.7billion in 2015, with 840 deals recorded. The overall fintech deal funding in Asia grew slightly year-on-year, reaching a new record high of $8.6 billion compared to $8.4 billion in 2015. Read More |
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JPM Teams with Fintech to Deliver Digital Mortgage Platform
JPMorgan Chase has partnered with fintech firm Roostify to build a digital self-service mortgage platform that will allow consumers to upload and electronically sign mortgage documents. The platform, which is expected to be rolled out later this year, will be integrated with Chase’s backend Mortgage Express loan origination system. Read More |
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Asian Fintech Startups See a Record $5.4 Billion VC Funding in 2016, Driven by China
Fintech startups in Asia gained a record $5.4 billion in venture-capital funding last year, up from $4.8 billion in 2015. According to data from venture capital research firm CBInsights, Asia accounted for nearly 20% in the number of Fintech investments worldwide. Notably, however, the deals are far more substantial in the region with 43% of the global funding taking place in Asia, in 2016. Read More |
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YES Bank’s Business Accelerator for Fintech Startups Receives Phenomenal Response with More Than 750 Applications
YES Fintech an extension of YES BANK’s Alliances Relationships and Technology (A.R.T) philosophy, has received phenomenal response from the global community of Fintechs, with 753 applicants around the world. 10 start-ups will be selected for the first cohort of the 15 week program commencing on March 20, 2017. YES FINTECH Accelerator – a joint initiative of YES BANK, T-Hub, Anthill and Let’s Talk Payments will involve 3 week onsite interactions at Mumbai and Hyderabad and 12 weeks offsite interactions, wherein the selected startups can continue to work on their business from the home location. Read More |
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Indian Fintech Startups Can Now Get Unparalleled Access to Most of the World’s Markets for Growth and Expansion
Singapore-based The FinLab opens its accelerator programme to Indian Fintech startups. The FinLab focuses on accelerating the development of Fintech startups. Through their networks into the financial industry and the venture capital ecosystem, the accelerator provides startups with valuable insights and a strong infrastructure enabling them to grow and expand their business. Read More |
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