Tag: digital payments

UPI Services Roll Out in Sri Lanka, Mauritius: Details

India’s Unified Payment Interface (UPI) services were on Monday rolled out in Sri Lanka and Mauritius, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi describing it as linking historic ties with modern digital technology.

India’s RuPay card services were also launched in Mauritius at a virtual ceremony attended by Prime Minister Modi, his Mauritian counterpart Pravind Jugnauth and Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe.

In his remarks, Modi hoped the new fintech services would help the two nations and said the UPI is implementing “new responsibilities of uniting partners with India”.

“Today is a special day for the three friendly countries of the Indian Ocean Region as we are linking our historic ties with modern digital technology,” he said.

“I believe that Sri Lanka and Mauritius will benefit from the UPI system,” Modi said.

The prime minister said digital public infrastructure has brought about a revolutionary change in India. He also highlighted India’s focus on its “neighbourhood first policy”.

“Be it a natural disaster, health-related, economic or supporting on the international stage, India has been the first responder, and will continue to be so,” he said.

The launch of the Indian services in Sri Lanka and Mauritius came amid New Delhi’s increasing bilateral economic ties with the two countries.

The move enables the availability of UPI settlement services for Indian nationals travelling to Sri Lanka and Mauritius as well as for Mauritian nationals travelling to India.

Developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), UPI is an instant real-time payment system to facilitate inter-bank transactions through mobile phones. RuPay is a global card payment network from India, with wide acceptance at shops, ATMs, and online.

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Google Pay, NPCI Sign MoU to Expand UPI Globally, Aim to Ease Digital Payments Abroad

Google Pay and National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) will work together to expand Unified Payments Interface (UPI), the instant payments system widely used in the country, to international markets, Google and NPCI confirmed Wednesday. A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has been signed between Google Pay India and NPCI subsidiary, NPCI International Payments Ltd (NIPL), to bring the instant payment functionality to other countries. UPI has become a widespread mode of digital payment throughout India in recent years, with interoperability between payments apps like Google Pay, PhonePe, and Paytm. The value processed via UPI payments in 2023 stood at Rs. 167 lakh crores, according to Google.

The MoU signed between Google Pay India and NIPL primarily seeks to ease digital payments abroad for travellers outside of India. The collaboration will also aid in establishing a UPI-style digital payments infrastructure in other countries, a press release for the announcement said. Additionally, Google and NPCI also aim to leverage the UPI infrastructure to ease the process of remittances between countries, thus simplifying cross-border financial exchanges.

“UPI has demonstrated to the world the step change that happens in economies with the introduction of interoperable, population scale digital infrastructure and each economy that joins such networks will create impact beyond the sum of parts,” Deeksha Kaushal, director of partnerships at Google Pay India said.

According to the press release, the initiative will also help bring Indian customers to foreign merchants, reducing the need for credit or forex cards and instead allow UPI apps like Google Pay for international digital payments. “This strategic partnership will not only simplify foreign transactions for Indian travellers but will also allow us to extend our knowledge and expertise of operating a successful digital payments ecosystem to other countries,” Ritesh Shukla, CEO of NPCI International Payments Limited, said.

Last year, Google Pay introduced a UPI Lite feature on its platform that enables small-value digital payments with just one tap, without the need to enter the UPI PIN, as required in regular transactions. UPI Lite supports a maximum instant transaction of up to Rs. 200 at a time. Users can load their UPI Lite account with up to Rs. 2,000, twice a day.

In August, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) increased the UPI Lite transaction limit from Rs. 200 to Rs. 500. The overall wallet limit, however, was retained at Rs. 2,000 only. A month later, NPCI said that UPI transactions had crossed the 10-billion mark in August. According to the NPCI data, number of UPI transactions stood at 10.24 billion on August 30. In value terms, the transactions amounted to Rs. 15,18,456.4 crore exchanging hands.

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Paytm Reported 51.5 Percent Rise in Q4 Revenue, Posted Profit for Second Consecutive Quarter

Indian digital payments firm Paytm reported a 51.5 percent rise in fourth-quarter revenue on Friday, aided by a surge in loan growth, and posted an operating profit for a second consecutive quarter.

Paytm’s parent, One 97 Communications, said revenue rose to Rs. 23.35 billion in the January-March quarter, from Rs. 15.41 billion a year earlier.

Operating profit, which the company defines as core profit before cost of employee stock-owning plans, was Rs. 2.34 billion, including Rs. 1.82 billion paid for the full year from a government scheme to incentivise UPI payments, compared with a loss of Rs. 3.68 billion a year earlier.

That was still higher than the Rs. 310 million in the previous quarter, which was the SoftBank-backed firm’s first-ever operating profit since it went public in November 2021.

Paytm’s consolidated net loss narrowed to Rs. 1.68 billion, from Rs. 7.61 billion a year earlier. Loans distributed through Paytm more than tripled to Rs. 125.54 billion, powering an 183 percent surge in revenue in its fast-growing financial services business.

Revenue at Paytm’s two biggest divisions, from payments services to consumers and to merchants, rose 12 percent and 61 percent, respectively.

Its contribution margin — a measure of revenue less cashbacks and charges such as payment processing — rose to 55 percent, from 35 percent a year earlier.

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No Charge on Normal UPI Payments, 1.1 Percent Fee to Be Levied on PPI Merchant Transactions: NPCI

National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) on Wednesday said there is no charge for the bank account to bank account-based UPI payments or normal UPI payments. However, interchange charges are only applicable for the prepaid payment instruments (PPI) merchant transactions and there is no charge to customers, NPCI clarified in a statement.

NPCI has permitted the PPI wallets to be part of interoperable UPI ecosystem and levied 1.1 percent charge on unified payment interface (UPI) transactions above Rs. 2,000 while using PPI.

“The interchange charges introduced are only applicable for the PPI merchant transactions and there is no charge to customers, and it is further clarified that there are no charges for the bank account to bank account-based UPI payments (i.e. normal UPI payments),” it said.

With this addition to UPI, the customers will have the choice of using any bank account, RuPay Credit card and prepaid wallets on UPI-enabled apps, it said.

In recent times, it said, UPI has emerged as the preferred mode of digital payment by offering free, fast, secure and seamless experience.

Traditionally, it said, the most preferred method of UPI transactions is linking the bank account in any UPI-enabled app for making payments which contribute over 99.9 percent of total UPI transactions.

These bank account-to-account transactions continue to remain free for customers and merchants.

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AIIMS Delhi to Go Fully Digital From April 2023; Will Accept Smartcards, UPI Payments

All payments at AIIMS-New Delhi will go fully digital from April 1, 2023, with the premier healthcare institute introducing smartcards in addition to UPI (Unified Payments Interface) and card payments at counters.

“AIIMS New Delhi introduces #SmartCard in addition to UPI and card payments at all counters. All payments at AIIMS to go completely digital from April 1, 2023,” it said in a tweet.

The institute has also decided to promote the use of Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA) IDs for outpatient department (OPD) registrations of new and follow-up cases.

According to an office memorandum issued on November 15, this will entail adoption of the National Health Authority’s (NHA) ‘Scan and Share QR Code‘ solution in all OPDs at AIIMS-New Delhi to facilitate quick registration and provide a queue number to patients on arrival.

Dedicated counters and kiosks will be operated from at least 7 am to 10 pm to facilitate the creation of ABHA IDs for patients without a smartphone.

This project will be piloted in the new Rajkumari Amrit Kaur OPD from November 21 and taken up on a mission mode from January 1 across all OPDs of AIIMS-New Delhi.

“It has been noted that patients visiting AIIMS OPDs are standing in long queues for registration. Manual entry of patient demographics is being done for registration despite the availability of Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA) with many patients.

“At the time of registration using ABHA ID OTP is often delayed. The maximum attempts to resend OTP is also limited to three times,” the memorandum read.

The NHA’s Scan and Share QR Code solution has shown promising results in reducing the time taken for registrations and also helped in streamlining the patient’s journey on arrival at the hospital, according to the memorandum.

The solution is also biometric and face-authentication enabled to allow sharing of ABHA ID details. 

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RuPay Credit Cards Will Be Linked to UPI Platform in a Few Months: NPCI MD

With cash usage continuing to remain high despite a jump in online payments, a top NPCI official on Friday said currency in circulation will reduce only when a third of the population starts using digital payment alternatives.

National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Dilip Asbe said that right now, the overall universe of people using services like the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is 250 million or about a fifth of the population.

“… unless we see one-third of the population on both demand and supply side having the digital payment structure, it is very difficult to start seeing some reduction in cash in circulation,” Asbe said while speaking at an event organised by Bank of Baroda.

Given the current growth, he said it will take between 12 and 18 months for the reduction in cash in circulation.

For the last many months, high Currency in Circulation (CIC) has been baffling industry watchers since official data has been showing a spike in digital payments through mediums such as UPI.

CIC has risen to over 14 percent of GDP as against 12 percent in 2016 during demonetisation.

Asbe explained that it is a “complex situation”, and pointed out that despite the payments into people’s bank accounts under the direct benefit transfer scheme, people cash out from the Automated Teller Machines (ATMs). Moreover, ‘rolling cash’ has also increased as seen at ATMs and point of sale transactions’ average ticket sizes.

In developed countries, he said, CIC as a percentage of GDP is in single digits, and given all the efforts and awareness campaigns, “we should aim for the CIC to reduce to single digits in the next five years”.

Asbe said there will be ten times growth in the transaction volumes and Indians will be executing a billion digital payments transaction in a day.

He also said that in the next couple of months, RuPay credit cards will be linked to the UPI platform.

NPCI is in talks with SBI Cards, BoB Cards, Axis Bank and Union Bank of India for the same and will submit a proposal to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to take forward the policy announcement on the UPI front.

“We might have to take care of the smaller merchants and protect them from the MDR (Merchant Discount Rate) while the existing credit card servicing merchants can continue to pay,” he said.

UPI transactions, which were carried out till now linked to saving bank accounts, are free by mandate while the credit card players are allowed to charge up to 2 percent of a transaction as MDR which is to be paid by merchants.

Asbe said NPCI is in talks with over 30 countries from an internationalisation of UPI perspective, which includes both helping countries create their own payments networks and also making cross-country payments easier using the platform.

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UPI, Non-Cash Payments to Constitute 65 Percent of All Transactions by 2026: Report

Non-cash payments using modes like UPI will account for 65 percent of all the transactions by 2026 against the 40 percent level estimated at present, a report said on Thursday. The report — which comes amid a rapid rise in unified payments interface (UPI) since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic over two years ago — also said that the digital payments industry will be $10 trillion (roughly Rs. 7,75,40,800 crore) opportunities by 2026 against $3 trillion (roughly Rs. 2,32,62,800 crore) at present.

Consultancy firm BCG and leading third-party UPI services provider Phonepe have come out with the report, which also projects that UPI adoption will surge to 75 percent of the population in the next five years from the 35 percent level at the end of FY21.

The consultancy’s managing director Prateek Roongta said merchant payments will drive the growth in adoption of non-cash or digital transactions to 65 percent from the present 40 percent levels.

The report estimated a seven-fold growth in merchant payments to $2.5-2.7 trillion (roughly Rs. 1,93,88,400 crore to Rs. 2,09,39,500 crore) by 2026 against the present $0.3-0.4 trillion (roughly Rs. 23,26,200 crore to Rs. 31,01,800 crore), which will drive the overall non-cash volumes growth.

“We will increasingly observe digital payments get embedded in all forms of commerce. We will also witness the progression from embedded payments to embedded finance. As more and more merchants begin to accept digital payments, it will unlock a significant change in access to credit for small merchants due to the creation of a digital transaction trail,” Roongta said.

The next wave of growth is likely to come from Tier 3-6 locations, as evidenced in the past two years wherein Tier 3-6 cities have contributed to nearly 60-70 percent of new mobile payment customers, the report said.

The report also advocated for a “sustainable merchant discount rate” to incentivise the players in the ecosystem and ensure that they are encouraged to drive merchant acquisition and push digital payments.

“Introducing an MDR of 0.2-0.3 percent of the transaction value for small tickets can allow banks, payment players and the overall ecosystem to run sustainable businesses,” according to the report.

It said the exponential rise in digital transactions is increasing pressure on bank systems, and the inability of some banks to handle demand spikes is a key reason for UPI transaction failures. As a solution, it is recommended banks to evaluate options outside core banking, including the cloud, as banking platforms have limited scalability and room to improve on service quality.

The report identified thin margins as a key challenge for players in the ecosystem, which leads them to transition to high-margin offerings like lending and investment facilitation.

This will lead to the emergence of super app ecosystems, where players have built a large captive customer base with access to rich customer data and purchasing behaviour patterns.

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