The number of digital wallet users globally will increase from 2.3bn in 2019 to 4bn in 2024 and global non-cash transactions will grow to nearly 1.1tn in 2023 from 708.5bn in 2019, according to the World Payments Report 2020... More
Google Pay users in India can now make tokenized NFC-based credit and debit card payments at contactless POS terminals, starting with customers of Axis Bank and SBI “with Kotak and more banks expected to follow suit very soon”... More
Passengers travelling on Delhi Transport Corporation buses are piloting a contactless e-ticketing service that enables them to pay their fare via a mobile app by scanning a QR code on the bus... More
PARTNER NEWS: Watch brand Titan has partnered with State Bank of India (SBI) for the launch of a range of watches that makes use of Canada-based Tappy Tech’s wearable payments technology to let consumers make contactless transactions at POS terminals across India... More
More than half of consumers in the Asia Pacific region would make contactless tap-to-phone NFC payments directly to a merchant’s mobile phone at the checkout “despite solutions not yet being widely available in the region”, according to research released by Visa. More
The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has announced the launch of subsidiary firm NPCI International Payments Limited (NIPL) with the aim of exporting its Unified Payments Interface (UPI) real-time mobile payments service and RuPay domestic payment card scheme to global markets... More
Google Pay has begun testing tokenized NFC-based credit and debit card payments in India, enabling users of supported cards to add them to their payment options for NFC, QR and online payments... More
Indian telecommunications giant Reliance Jio has begun piloting Jio Pay, a new UPI-enabled payments service which includes support for both NFC and QR mobile payments... More
Bank customers in India will soon be able to book, pay for and receive railway e-tickets for use on their mobile device through their mobile banking app... More
Axis Bank has become the first in India to offer merchants the ability to accept NFC, contactless, QR and remote payments on standard smartphones... More
The Competition Commission of India is looking into allegations that Google is unfairly promoting its mobile payments app in the country, “five sources familiar with the case” have told Reuters... More
Buses will no longer accept cash payments once current curbs on public transportation are eased, the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) has announced... More
BharatPe launches two new features in its app to curb need to touch handsets for checking transactions — Economic Times — “With Paisa Bolega — voice alerts of transactions — shopkeepers will be able to hear aloud instant confirmation of all payments received through their BharatPe QR, without touching the phone… This does away [with] the need for the merchant to check his phone repeatedly to see if money has come in.”
Facebook-backed Reliance Jio pilots basic grocery ordering service on WhatsApp in India — The Next Web — “Less than a week ago, Facebook announced it was investing $5.7bn into India’s largest mobile carrier, Reliance Jio. We now have an idea of how the two giants plan to collaborate: The latter’s ecommerce arm, JioMart, is now testing a system for WhatsApp users to order goods via the messaging service.”
“We had a tremendously successful launch in India from which we learnt a lot of features, and we are bringing that and we are revamping our payments products globally,” Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai has revealed... More
‘Low KYC’ norm to help mobile wallets retain their customers — Economic Times — “In a move set to bring relief to scores of mobile wallet firms such as Paytm, PhonePe, Amazon Pay and their several million users, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will allow wallet service providers to continue operating their millions of non-compliant know-your-customer (KYC) accounts which earlier faced cancellation… An estimated over 200m mobile wallets ran the risk of being cancelled by the regulators, once the deadline to upgrade their non-compliant accounts to ‘full KYC’ accounts expires on February 29.”
Card issuers in India are to be required to ship all new cards to customers with contactless functionality switched off by default — and also provide cardholders with a range of easy ways to toggle their card’s contactless support on or off... More
Customers of India’s Icici Bank can now make a cash withdrawal at any of the bank’s 15,000 ATMs, using just their mobile phone... More
Icici Bank launches India’s largest API banking portal with nearly 250 APIs — Icici Bank — “The Icici Bank API Banking portal, which consists of 250 APIs, enables developers of prospective partner companies across the globe to seamlessly sign up on it, create an application, select the application, test it out and get the sample code. With this, businesses, fintechs, corporates and e-commerce start-ups can easily partner with the Bank and co- create innovative customer solutions in a frictionless manner, all from the convenience of a single portal.”
“UPI has had the fastest acceptance rate not just among payment platforms but digital platforms of any kind,” Dilip Asbe, chief executive officer of the National Payments Corporation of India, has told Bloomberg... More
