Investors may have been shocked when one of India s biggest banks disclosed a 1.77 billion fraud by a billionaire jeweller but the central bank has recorded data that shows the problem runs far deeper and wider. Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data which a Reuters reporter obtained through a right-to-information request shows state-run banks have reported 8 670 loan fraud cases totalling Rs 61260 crore ( 9.58 billion) over the last five financial years up to March 31 2017. In India loan frauds typically refer to cases where the borrower intentionally tries to deceive the lending bank and does not repay the loan. The figures expose the magnitude of the problem in a banking sector already under pressure after years of poor lending practices. Bad loans surged to a record peak of nearly 149 billion last year. Bank loan frauds have steadily increased as well reaching Rs 17 634 crore in the latest financial year from Rs 6 357 crore in 2012-13 according to the data which doesn t include the PNB case. Punjab National Bank India s second-largest state lender said on Wednesday two junior officers at a single branch had illegally steered 1.77 billion in fraudulent loans to companies most of them controlled by billionaire jeweller Nirav Modi. It was India s biggest fraud ever. This might be the tip of the iceberg or the middle and that is the worry said Pratibha Jain partner at law firm Nishith Desai Associates who advises on bankruptcy cases. The fact is we don t know what else is out there. The RBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But in June 2017 the central bank in its Financial Stability Report called frauds in banks and financial institutions one of the emerging risks to the financial sector . In a number of large value frauds serious gaps in credit underwriting standards were evident the RBI said adding that some of the gaps include lack of continuous monitoring of cash flows and cash profits diversion of funds double financing and general credit governance issues in banks. The RBI has been commended for forcing Indian banks to fully disclose its bad loans speed up their recovery and stop hiding fraud cases as non-performing assets. Yet to some critics the RBI has at the same time been too guarded about publicly sharing data on loan defaults or fraudulent loans. This is partly due to legal constraints on disclosing individual cases and worries investors would pummel the affected banks making loan recovery even harder. In fact the numbers of loan fraud cases across India could be even higher since they only include cases reported to the RBI which involve only loans of Rs 100 000 or more. In its right-to-information request Reuters sought data from 20 of India s 21 state-run lenders and obtained 15 replies. PNB topped the list with 389 cases totalling Rs 6 562 crore ( 1.03 billion) over the last five financial years in terms of the total amounts involved. Reuters was unable to obtain a detailed breakdown on the exact nature and method of the loan frauds the banks reported to RBI over the last five financial years. After PNB Bank of Baroda had the highest amount of loan fraud reported with Rs 4 473 crore from 389 cases and Bank of India ranked third with loan frauds totalling Rs 4 050 crore from 231 cases over the same period the data shows. India s biggest lender State Bank of India reported 1 069 loan fraud cases in the last five financial years but did not disclose the amount. It was also unclear how much has been recovered by the banks over the years. The magnitude of the bad debt in India forced the government last year to bail out the sector by pledging to inject 32 billion over this financial year and next. Yet analysts and credit rating agencies have long warned that solving the bad debt at India s banking sector needs to also involve wholesale reforms of the lending practices that led to the surge in bad loans. Bankers have been blamed for steering funds to politically connected business tycoons such as Vijay Mallya without due diligence or after being pressed by government officials to steer funds to sectors it wanted to promote such as infrastructure. Mallya stands accused in India of fraudulently palming off losses from his now defunct Kingfisher Airlines onto banks by taking out loans he had no intention of repaying an allegation he denies. Nirav Modi the jeweller accused in the PNB fraud case posed for pictures with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland where he was part of India s delegation of corporate leaders.
NEW DELHI: Canada has initiated a dialogue with India on investigating cases against Sikh extremists and combating Sikh radicalism an apparent attempt to dispel controversy over the Justin Trudeau government s alleged links with Sikh extremists. The national security advisors (NSAs) of the two countries held discussions this week to identify areas of cooperation to combat Sikh radicalism according to people aware of the development. This comes ahead of Canadian PM Trudeau s week-long visit to India from Saturday during which security and defence partnership is expected to figure high on the agenda. The two sides recently held a meeting of the joint working group on counter-terrorism to firm up specific areas of cooperation and this was preceded by a deputy NSA level dialogue. The issue of revival of Sikh radicalism in Canada and presence of supporters of Khalistan movement in Trudeau cabinet have cast a shadow on Indo-Canadian partnership the growing economic partnership including rising investments in India notwithstanding. Trade between Canada and India doubled in the 10 years to 2016 to about 8 billion. Last year Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh had refused to meet Canadian defence minister Harjit Sajjan accusing him of supporting the Khalistan movement. Sajjan is accompanying Trudeau on this trip. Recently Sajjan and infrastructure minister Amarjeet Sohi two of the four Sikh members of Trudeau s cabinet countered Punjab CM s claim and said they did not support the Khalistan movement. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has raised the issue with Trudeau during their meetings. Nonetheless several gurdwaras in Canada have barred Indian officials from entering the premises. Canada s official line which Trudeau is expected to deliver during the trip is that it supports a unified India and will not support any form of extremism. The controversy over Sikh radicalism notwithstanding India and Canada will try to firm up maritime defence partnership and Canada is willing to share expertise of its defence industry in maritime sphere the people cited earlier said. While Canada has growing ties with China it also supports India s position on the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative Canadian officials said. During his visit Trudeau will address a number of business meets in several cities. Indo-Canadian Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA)and Investment Protection Treaty will figure high on the agenda as Canadian investors are looking forward to the protection pact for enhancing quantum of investments.
NEW DELHI: The visiting Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has applauded India s religious diversity and called for unity between the Shia and Sunni communities in a statement that is being seen as important for the Islamic world in the backdrop of lukewarm ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia often ascribed to sectarian differences. India is a living museum of different ethnicities and religions peacefully co-existing. This process is going on for centuries. Shia Sunnis Sufis Hindus Sikhs and others are living together. They together built their country and built their civilisation Rouhani said in Hyderabad on Thursday night in a speech delivered in Persian. Addressing Muslim leaders and scholars belonging to different Islamic schools of thought Rouhani called for unity among the Shias and Sunnis while blaming the West for sowing the seeds of discord among various sects of Muslims. That the Iranian president chose India to call for unity among the Shia and Sunni communities is significant given India s growing multi-faceted partnership with both Iran and Saudi Arabia experts said. India has been able to maintain a balanced foreign policy outreach to engage with both the countries at the same time they said. Pointing out that there can be no military solution to conflicts Rouhani said that Iran seeks brotherly relations with all Muslims nations and the countries of the region including India. Rouhani on Friday visited the historic Makkah Masjid in Hyderabad and offered prayers for Shia-Sunni unity and peace across the Muslim world. The visit to the Sunni mosque is significant as it is aimed at conveying the message of Shia-Sunni unity. Iran is a Shia majority country.
Iranian president Hassan Rouhani s visit to India is likely to get buried under the din of domestic cacophony especially as it comes amid the unearthing of a major banking scam. But the importance of this three-day engagement should not be underestimated. The trajectory of bilateral ties holds far-reaching diplomatic economic and geostrategic implications for India. The ancient civilisational relationship isn t fraught but it isn t flourishing either caught between twin stools of respective geopolitical compulsions and ambition. Narendra Modi and Rouhani must mitigate multiple challenges to bolster a relationship that goes much beyond fuel trade and at least for India holds the key to its strategic game in Afghanistan central Asia and beyond including two airbases in Tajikistan. To quote from Georgetown University associate professor C Christine Fair s paper India-Iran Security Ties: Thicker Than Oil in the journal Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA): India needs Iran to achieve its varied objectives in Central Asia. Iran for its part sees a tremendous complementarity (sic) of interest with India. Both states seek to undermine unipolarity and both states are uncomfortable with the role that the United States has played and will likely continue to play in West Asia despite the fact that both states have very different relations with the United States. File image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Iran president Hassan Rouhani. PTI The shared concerns also extend to Pakistan where Iran fears a consolidation of Sunni influence (exacerbated by Saudi Arabia s recent decision to appoint former Pakistan COAS general Raheel Sharif as the chief of Saudi-led Islamic Military Alliance) and New Delhi is wary of Rawalpindi s sub-conventional war against India to destabilise the region and maintain international focus on Kashmir. Bilateral engagements are also subject to domestic pulls and pressures. In the case of Rouhani who is on his second visit to India and his first since becoming president it is more so. Iran s economy is sagging food inflation is high and jobs are hard to come by. The country has just emerged from a massive youth unrest that resulted in over 20 deaths overall and 450 arrests in Tehran alone. Rouhani a staunch backer of the 2015 multi-nation Nuclear Deal and a moderate voice within Iran s competing power structure knows that his time is running out. He had put all his eggs in the deal basket but with Donald Trump playing truant hopes of the agreement boosting the economy are receding and fears of renewed US sanctions are looming large. Trump wants Iran to suspend its ballistic missile program and restrict permanently Iran s uranium enrichment facilities conditions that Tehran will never accept and even EU signatories to the Nuclear Deal don t agree upon especially as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has certified no less than nine times that Tehran has not breached the terms of the 2015 Barrack Obama-era accord. The deal therefore hangs in limbo with Trump threatening that he has signed the latest sanctions relief for Iran under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) for the last time . Under the JCPOA mechanism a part of the Nuclear Deal agreement the US president must certify at periodic intervals that Iran has obeyed the terms of the deal to keep waivers in place. This is the last chance Trump had thundered last January In the absence of such an agreement (immediate curb over uranium enrichment and ballistic missile program) the US will not again waive sanctions in order to stay in the Iran Nuclear Deal. And if at any time I judge that such an agreement is not within reach I will withdraw from the deal immediately. Rouhani has sounded defiant but he knows that the sanctions which had been imposed in 2007 and stayed in place till 2016 have crippled the Iranian economy. A recent BBC study finds that Iran s middle class have been hurt the most and average household budgets have fallen which were reflected in the nationwide protests. Iran is in need of allies. Rouhani hopes that he will be able to persuade India to invest billions in connectivity infrastructure industrial and energy projects. His focus on India betrays a shrewd strategic sense. Both countries share deep and enduring civilisational ties a motif that Rouhani s itinerary stressed upon as he touched down in Hyderabad a city that has a sizeable Shia population and shares long historic and cultural ties with Iran. More importantly India is right now in a sweep spot vis-a-vis the US. New Delhi is one of the rare nations that can do business with Tehran without worrying too much about incurring Trump s wrath. Not surprisingly the 21-member high-powered delegation accompanying Rouhani includes ministers and businessmen who are keen to seal a number of deals. There are a number of projects for expansion of ties in the pipeline that not only will be in the interests of both nations but also in the interest of the region Iran s ambassador to India Gholamreza Ansari had said in a national day speech last week according to news agency Reuters. Before leaving for India Rouhani told reporters in Tehran that he hoped to ink several MoUs with India. He called it his key objective to speed up proceedings of Chabahar agreement the 500-million trilateral deal signed between Iran India and Afghanistan last May that is at the fulcrum of India s great power aspirations in Central Asia and provides New Delhi with a secure transit route bypassing Pakistan. Modi would be mindful of the tough strategic calculus that India must solve to engage simultaneously with the US and Iran. In areas of connectivity trade culture and shared strategic vision Iran could be India s most valuable partner in West Asia. Yet growing convergence with the US on a number of areas including but not limited to the rise of China makes it imperative for India not to court Iran at the falling foul of a volatile Trump whose administration has focused on Tehran as the source of all evil in West Asia. Being at the fulcrum of Trump s Indo-Pacific and Afghanistan policy however gives India the freedom to carry out its strategic and geo-economic objectives which in this case is a close engagement with Iran. The Trump administration encourages India to take leadership in Indo-Pacific emerge as a net security provider in South Asia and is also reliant on New Delhi as a stabilising influence in Afghanistan. These competing currents are working in favour of India at least for now. Last October for instance US secretary of state Rex Tillerson on his New Delhi visit had clarified that Washington would not block legitimate business activities with Iran by India and had also reiterated that he saw no contradiction with US-Iran sanctions and India s port project in Chabahar. Yet there are challenges. Diplomacy isn t a zero-sum game and frequent overlapping of interests needs to be managed. As WPS Sidhu a professor at New York University s Center for Global Affairs writes in Livemint While both countries will seek to manage their differences as evident from the absence of any reference to Iran in Tillerson s speech it may still dampen the otherwise sunny prospects. Moreover how India responds to Trump s virtual call to arms against Iran will also have an impact on New Delhi s relations with Israel and Saudi Arabia. So far Modi has shown his deft diplomatic touch in segregating India s bilateral interests with nations at odds with each other without any serious diplomatic spill. However India s biggest weakness lies not in striking of agreements and deals but in follow-up and execution of those deals and projects. Despite the huge hype in Indian media Chabahar port is only partly operational. India s ponderous bureaucracy and logistical difficulties (caused by international sanctions) have made progress very slow. To put it in perspective the current operational capacity of Chabahar deepwater harbour lies at 8.5 million tonnes that could be increased to 80 million tonnes of annual freight capacity when it becomes fully operational as per Abdol Sattar Dushouki from the Centre for Balochistan Studies in DW. It could take a year maybe more for India to complete the work. The Modi government has recently made a decision to allow Indian business entities to invest in rupees in Iran for the first time a facility that was extended till just now to only Nepal and Bhutan. The rupee-rial mechanism may ease doing of business with Tehran. The delay in completion of Chabahar project the roadblock over Farzad B oil block should not be allowed to act as spanners in the development of bilateral ties. For both nations it is a moment in history they cannot afford to let slip.
New Delhi: India s most ambitious space mission yet Chandrayaan-2 that hopes to place a robotic rover on the moon could be launched as early as April this year says Dr Jitendra Singh Minister of State in the Prime Minister s Office that is in charge of space affairs. Chandrayaan-2 is one of the most remarkable ISRO missions of 2018 and it will be a world event Dr Singh told NDTV.Only USA Russia and China have been able to soft-land spacecraft on the lunar surface. If India succeeds it will be a huge achievement for space agency ISRO that has a budget almost 20 times less than US space agency NASA.Dr Singh says Chandrayaan-2 with its many scientific capabilities will throw up data that may open up possibilities of future habitation of the moon . There are tantalising possibilities of a human outpost on the moon in the future and India is already investing in its human space flight programme.ISRO seeks to land Chandrayaan-2 very close to the South Pole of the moon.Chandrayaan-2 is India s second foray to the moon and the Rs 800 crore mission aims at putting an orbiter around the moon from which a lander and a rover would detach and reach the lunar surface. Landings in thin atmosphere and low gravity of the moon are very tricky. Even though Neil Armstrong had walked or one can say taken a stroll on the lunar surface in 1969 but it was left to India s small Chandrayaan-1 space craft launched in 2008 that discovered the presence of water molecules on the parched lunar surface in 2009 said Dr Singh. The work does acknowledge that India helped discover water on the moon which was considered a parched environment till then. Chandrayaan-1 mission was an orbiter and it was launched in 2008The Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft which weighs three tonnes is being finalised at ISRO s satellite centre in Bengaluru and will be hoisted into space from Sriharikota using the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle MK II or GSLV MK II. The unique spacecraft will carry 13 scientific instruments that will study the moon like never before. Chandrayaan-2 will be a breakthrough mission not only for India but for the entire world said Dr Singh asserting that the mission will make every Indian proud .ISRO that hopes to place India s flag on the rover says the launch window opens in April and goes on till October 2018. The rover has to be placed on the lunar dawn and is expected to last at least for 14 Earth days on the lunar surface. It will analyse the soil and look for moon quakes while mapping lunar resources.This unmanned mission Dr Singh says packs in more power than the Apollo missions by NASA . Chandrayaan-2 will also reinforce India s capabilities and supremacy in the comity of world nations he said.India s Chandrayaan-1 mission was an orbiter where India was the captain and there were several global players like USA Britain Bulgaria and the European Space Agency. It cost Rs 450 crore and was launched using India s workhorse rocket the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) in 2008. CommentsClose X ISRO seeks to land Chandrayaan-2 very close to the South Pole of the moon a very tricky place to land says Dr Singh. All 12 other moon landings have always been on the lunar equatorial region this region with its unique geology will give new insights on the origin of the universe he adds.More than 100 scientists and engineers are working overtime to try and finish the mission on time.
Mumbai: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the country s largest container terminal at Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust in Mumbai on Sunday an official said today.The JNPT s Fourth Container Terminal (FCT) s Phase I has been completed in a record time at a cost of Rs 4 719 crore and is expected to boost container trade and logistics in a big way.In October 2015 PM Modi had laid the foundation stone for this terminal which will double JNPT s current container handling capacity.The FCT will add capacity of 2.4 million (24 lakh) containers per annum in the first phase and after completion of the second phase in 2022 the capacity will be quadrupled to a whopping 100 lakh containers per year.The FCT was developed on design build fund operate and transfer (DBFOT) basis for a concession period of 30 years with an estimated investment of Rs 7 915 crore for both the phases.The terminal will be able to dock mother vessels handle the biggest containers ships from a quay length of one km handle three container ships simultaneously with sufficient yard space and cranes which can reach 22 rows wide or more.The FCT will be linked to the dedicated road access and a rail freight corridor and will receive around 350 containers per rake besides provision for storing 1 600 refrigerated (reefer) containers for perishables agriculture and horticulture produce.Accordingly the official said the commencement of operations at FCT will offer immense opportunities for the EXIM community so that trade flourishes.The rail facilities will be the largest in India with the only on-dock Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) compliant facility in the country capable of handling 1.5-km long 360 Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit (TEU) container trains on completion of the DFC. CommentsClose X Under the Sagarmala project 101 projects worth Rs 2.5 lakh crore have been planned in Maharashtra of which five are already completed and another 58 are under various stages of development.
After months of anticipation WhatsApp rolled out its payments feature to select users across the country to much enthusiasm this week providing a strong boost to India s digital payments ecosystem. But that didn t almost happen because of the company s foreign origin. Turns out this was WhatsApp s second endeavour to enter India s payments market. Last year the messaging app the largest in India tried to partner with a private bank in the country to develop a digital wallet app to facilitate payments on its platform. That was when it ran into a reluctant Reserve Bank of India. The regulator was not ready to allow a foreign entity to enter India s digital payments space according to multiple stakeholders ET spoke with to piece together the story behind WhatsApp payments. Non-bank entities applying for authorisation shall be a company incorporated in India and registered under the Companies Act 1956 / Companies Act 2013 read RBI s master guidelines for prepaid payments instruments or digital wallets. WhatsApp being a Facebook owned company based in the United States therefore could not directly enter the Indian payments market. Meanwhile an important transformation was happening in India last year with the government actively promoting the Unified Payments Interface as part of its push to digitise India s economy. UPI which allows for real-time bank-to-bank transactions put up fewer entry barriers and foreign entities including Google began to rush in. WhatsApp took its time jumping on to the bandwagon. People familiar with the company s thinking said it was not confident of the UPI story since the payments protocol had not yet picked up steam in the early half of 2017. Since Facebook had a decent experience of bringing in payments through its Messenger platform in the US it wanted to bring in a similar digital wallet platform in India as well. But with UPI gaining traction as the year progressed and with other tech companies innovating on the platform WhatsApp decided to take the plunge. In its second coming WhatsApp payments with its large numbers and intuitive user interface promises to disrupt India s digital payments ecosystem all over again. WhatsApp payments its first globally throws up new challenges for existing payments companies mobile wallets and banks to hold on to their market shares. The Numbers Advantage Consumer payment is a low-margin game and the business is completely defined by the scale of operations. On this front WhatsApp has the potential to emerge as the dominant player because of its user base of more than 250 million in India according to industry estimates. Moreover the ease of use of WhatsApp s payments feature can only attract more people to adopt digital payments. WhatsApp s user interface has received rave reviews on social media including from payments companies. Just tried WhatsApp Payments got reminded what great user experience is all about tweeted Amrish Rau chief executive of payments company PayU India. Snapdeal CEO Kunal Bahl tweeted: Quite fascinating to see how many people have already started using WhatsApp for payments in a matter of few days Even in its beta stage with only a small percentage of its users getting access to the payments feature WhatsApp seems to have caught the imagination of Indians. A Peek Back In Time To understand the importance of user experience and brand recall in payments it is important to bring in some context to the Unified Payments Interface which was launched in August 2016 by then Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan. Initially there were only 21 banks on the UPI protocol. This January that number was at 71. UPI transactions have vaulted from about 2 million in December 2016 to a staggering 151.8 million in January. The sharpest jump was in October last year when transactions more than doubled to 76.7 million from around 30.7 million in September following the launch of Google Tez and its various cashbacks that has attracted thousands of users. Subsequently India s largest payments company Paytm too went live on UPI providing a huge boost to the number of UPI transactions in December and January. We had the application but we did not have the correct marketing strategies to take the product to the public and promote it in a major way said a senior executive with a private bank that has been a part of UPI right from the beginning. The tech-based payments players have always driven UPI payments. The fact that global giants like Google and Facebook are opening up payments applications in India for the first time in the world is testimony to the global standard settlements infrastructure created by National Payments Corp of India say bankers. NPCI manages the UPI protocol. While the launch of UPI was expected to give banks a fillip in their fight against new payment services most of them are now focusing on getting big partners like Google and WhatsApp on board. But All Is Not Well Soon after WhatsApp s payments feature became live the waters became murky with Paytm raising a hue and cry about the safety of the WhatsApp payments platform. Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma also alleged that WhatsApp was given too much leeway to ensure a better payments experience for customers. Facebook is openly colonising our payment system and is customising UPI to their benefit. UPI was built as an India Stack; now some American monopoly arm-twists UPI for customer implementation Sharma told ET adding that he plans to take the issue to NPCI and higher authorities if required. India Stack is the backend software infrastructure that allows technologies to be built around Aadhaar authentication and eKYC eSign DigiLocker and UPI. Several entrepreneurs across the spectrum have said that WhatsApp s entry in the Indian payments space has spooked incumbents. While several players in the industry agreed that WhatsApp was given concessions because of the user base it brings others said its entry in the Indian payments space has spooked incumbents. All companies threatened by WhatsApp payments are going to tag it as anti-national and try to pull it down as it s hard to win on merit against the network effects of WhatsApp tweeted Kunal Shah founder of payments company Freecharge. This strategy worked for Patanjali (Ayurveda-based consumer goods company) and wonder if it will work for payment companies. The ICICI Angle One bank that could seem to be getting a headstart in the process of WhatsApp s payments entry is ICICI Bank. The country s largest private lender is the sole banking partner for WhatsApp in the beta stage of its payments roll out. It is through ICICI Bank that UPI handles are being created for all users of WhatsApp s payments feature to transact via the chat application. However NPCI guidelines mandate that payment platforms have to balance out the handles across every participating bank eventually which should bring the others on to an equal footing with time. Further that doesn t mean they get access to customer data such as savings balance or security details which are masked by the platform. But what they get is an understanding of customer behavior. There are very strict security protocols to be followed for integration with the UPI backend but what the platform or the sponsor bank get to understand is the payment behavior of the customer which can throw up future business opportunities for the bank said a senior banker involved in the process. If banks or the payments platform manage to figure how to use transaction data of customers for cross-selling they will have a huge treasure trove to dig into he said. Though (WhatsApp) has started with ICICI Bank in the beta phase there are three other banks with whom the integration work is going on including State Bank of India HDFC Bank and Axis Bank said the banker. The Challenges While WhatsApp on UPI is a big step challenges are aplenty. Unlike Google which developed Tez from scratch for payments in India WhatsApp was incorporating payments in its chat application itself. Therefore it was always a challenge to bring in such large modifications in one of the busiest apps of the world said one of the bankers quoted above. It is because of WhatsApp s large user base that NPCI has not allowed a full-scale launch of the company s payments feature according to sources. It instead preferred a phased rollout to allow time for both the app and bank platforms to adjust to a sudden spike in volumes. Industry insiders say the beta rollout can help with gradual strengthening of processes to ensure near-zero transaction declines by banks. The Road Ahead WhatsApp will have to follow every specification laid down by NPCI in its UPI requirements once its payment feature goes fully live and the platform opens up to https://www.discogs.com/user/kfckk more banking partners said the people familiar with the developments. UPI has been built on the promise of an open architecture that is completely interoperable and it is this feature that has attracted so many tech companies to build solutions around it one of them said. Our enemy is cash and to eliminate that India will need multiple strong payment applications to drive volume. The industry is awaiting another round of boom in UPI transaction numbers in the coming months. With WhatsApp even those not using any of the other multiple payment applications for digital transactions might be willing to use its payment feature. My 70-year-old mother uses WhatsApp and now with payments made so simple even she can send or receive money directly into her bank account through WhatsApp payments said a senior banker with a private bank that s working with WhatsApp. That will change India s digital payments landscape forever. Multiple debates have cropped up accusations are being thrown around and competition is bound to increase. But what can be said is that the country s digital payments ecosystem has a bright future. The technology has been built and the products have been delivered. Now it is all about user adoption and that is where payments platforms will need to push more. With global companies like PayPal Google WhatsApp and Truecaller on one side and Indian giants such as Flipkart-promoted PhonePe and the Alibaba and Softbank-backed Paytm on the other Indian consumers cannot complain. All they need to do now is pick up their smartphones and start transacting.
No comments:
Post a Comment