Tag: google pay

Government to Delay Digital Payments Market Share Cap, Helping Walmart-Backed PhonePe, Google Pay

India will again delay caps on market share for a popular digital payments method, two sources told Reuters, benefiting Google Pay and Walmart-backed PhonePe as the authorities prioritise growth over concerns about market concentration.

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the quasi-regulator, will extend by as much as two years a year-end deadline to cap at 30 percent the market share of any company processing payments via the Unified Payment Interface (UPI), the sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

PhonePe’s share of UPI payments has risen to 48.3 percent from 37 percent in April 2020, while Google Pay’s share has declined to 37.4 percent from 44 percent, according to NPCI data. The two processed a combined 11.5 billion transactions in April, the data showed.

NPCI and Google Pay declined to comment. PhonePe did not respond to an email seeking comment.

India launched UPI in 2016 but barred companies from charging for the instant digital payments service in an effort to promote online transactions and reduce the use of cash in Asia’s third-largest economy.

Because they cannot charge for it, India’s banks and others like Meta-owned WhatsApp and Amazon Pay have not pushed UPI-based payments aggressively, leaving authorities worried about a concentration risk.

While their apps do not earn money from the payments, PhonePe and Google Pay have been able to use their UPI customer base to sell services such as loans and insurance.

NPCI, which has a regulatory mandate from the central bank, announced the 30 percent cap in 2020 but later extended the deadline by two years to the end of 2024.

The deadline will have to be extended again, said one of the sources, as it is not possible for PhonePe and Google Pay to reduce their market shares without hurting UPI payments growth.

A final decision on the extension will be communicated closer to the deadline, said the sources, who asked not to be identified because they are not allowed to speak to the media.

NPCI had hoped for more competition when WhatsApp was permitted to offer UPI-based payments in February 2020, but the company had just 0.2 percent market share as of April.

India’s Paytm, with the third-highest share, has experienced a decline in payments processed through its platforms after regulators placed curbs on a group entity.

Payment firms want the market-share cap removed, asking NPCI to let them charge for UPI payments to encourage competition, said an official at a payment company.

The government will decide whether to allow firms to charge for UPI payments, the two sources said, but one said NPCI does not favour removing the share cap.

The volume of UPI transactions rose 49.5 percent in April from a year earlier, less than the 54 percent rise logged March.

The central bank met on Tuesday with industry executives to brainstorm on ways to expand the UPI user base, which was about 300 million users and 50 million merchants late last year, according to the most recent data.

© Thomson Reuters 2024

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Several Users Face UPI Transaction Failures as Few Banks Hit by Technical Glitch

Several users took to X (formerly Twitter) to claim that UPI transactions were not going through. In a tweet, the National Payments Corporation of India or NPCI, confirmed that some banks had been hit by an outage, causing UPI transaction failures. 

“Regret inconvenience on UPI connectivity as few of the banks are having some internal technical issues. NPCI systems are working fine and we are working with these banks to ensure quick resolution,” wrote NPCI on X. 

Downdetector, a website that tracks real-time outages of services, showed several banks hit by an outage, including HDFC Bank, Bank of Baroda, SBI, Kotak and Bank of India. The outage tracker website also showed some issues in Google Pay services; however, the company clarified that this sometimes happens due to heavy traffic on bank servers. 

At the time of writing this post, HDFC Bank, in a tweet on X, confirmed that the transactions were going through. However, the company acknowledged that the outage impacted services.

 

 

Here are some posts by users on X:

 

 

 

 

Gadgets 360 team also tried using UPI payment using HDFC Bank, SBI, and Kotak bank accounts but faced issues. We expect the technical glitch to be resolved in a few hours, as claimed by NPCI. 



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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.

Google I/O 2023 saw the search giant repeatedly tell us that it cares about AI, alongside the launch of its first foldable phone and Pixel-branded tablet. This year, the company is going to supercharge its apps, services, and Android operating system with AI technology. We discuss this and more on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.
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Google for India 2023: AI-Powered Search Becomes More Visual and Local, New Services on Google Pay

Google rolled out its search generative experience (SGE) in India in August, bringing AI-generated responses and summaries to queries on its popular search engine. Generative AI search promised to provide more effective and engaging results and in-depth overviews. Now, the tech giant is rolling out improvements to its AI search tool in India. Google is making search generative experience in India more visual and localised for better results. The company announced the updates coming to its AI search in the country at its Google for India 2023 event held Thursday.

In its blog detailing new product experiences announced at the event, Google said it was adding new capabilities to SGE in India that make its AI-generated information preview more useful and easier to understand. SGE, Google said, will now be richer and more visual, adding more images and videos to some of its overviews.

“For example, when you search for something like, “what are the various ways to drape a saree?” you’ll be able to reference a more visual and easy-to-follow AI-powered overview with images and videos of multiple types of drapes,” Google explained in the blog.

Generative AI search is also becoming more localised, providing users location-specific responses. Users could find out what a city has to offer, explore things to do around them via SGE, which will now incorporate user reviews of places to provide better information.

Additionally, Google is also simplifying access to information on government schemes. In the coming weeks, SGE will help Indian users to easily navigate and find important information on over 100 government schemes in areas of healthcare, housing, employment, women’s welfare, farming, and more. All of this and everything else on SGE will be available in both Hindi and English languages.

Google is also expanding the capabilities of Google Lens, now allowing people to search for skin conditions visually similar to what they observe on their skin. Users can take a picture of their skin condition via Google Lens and get visual matches for information on it.

The company also announced new Google Pay services for both merchants and consumers. Google’s popular digital payments app is tying up with ePayLater to enable a credit line for merchants. It is also bringing sachet loans starting as low as start as low as Rs. 15,000 in partnership with DMI Finance. On the consumer side, Axis Bank is making its personal loans available on Google Pay, with more banks to follow. Users can now also avail credit lines from banks on UPI for payments via Google Pay, similar to a UPI payment.

Google is also bringing improvements to the shopping experience on its site, making it easier to find products and expanding discovery for small businesses. “Starting today, if you search for something like “Best phone under Rs. 15,000” on Google Search, you’ll now see a more visual feed of products to explore, with filters to help shoppers quickly and easily find the products they are looking for,” Google said on its blog.

YouTube, too, is getting new updates. The site will roll out an immersive watch page for news, which will pull content from credible sources. This feature will arrive in 11 Indian languages, starting Q4 2023.

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WhatsApp to Offer Card Payments, Services From Rival Digital Payment Providers in India

WhatsApp said on Wednesday that it will offer credit card payments and services from rival digital payment providers within its app in India, the latest bet by the Meta-owned service to boost commerce offerings in its biggest market. WhatsApp has more than 500 million users in India, though regulators there have capped its in-app WhatsApp Pay service to only 100 million people. People shopping on WhatsApp could also pay using popular services like Alphabet‘s Google Pay, Paytm and Walmart’s PhonePe but only after being redirected outside WhatsApp.

Payments via those rival services – and any others that run on India’s instant money transfer system UPI – will now be possible directly within WhatsApp, Meta said in a blog post. New in-app options for credit and debit cards will also be offered.

The additions bolster Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s plan for business messaging to become the “next major pillar” of the company’s sales growth, an agenda that has assumed greater urgency as Meta’s core ads business and metaverse project have come under pressure.

While WhatsApp Pay users will remain capped in India, there is no such limit on the number of users permitted to transact with businesses on WhatsApp using the other methods, a Meta spokesperson said.

With some 300 million people spending about $180 billion via India’s UPI each month, the new transaction options could serve as a powerful lure to attract businesses to pay Meta for access to WhatsApp users.

To date, WhatsApp has limited its end-to-end shopping experiences in India to pilot programs like that with online grocery service JioMart, run by India’s richest person, billionaire Mukesh Ambani, and the metro systems in the cities of Chennai and Bengaluru.

Moving forward, the new payment tools will be available to any company in India that uses WhatsApp’s business platform, which mainly serves large companies, according to the blog post.

Meta is also expanding its Meta Verified subscription program to businesses globally, giving companies a mechanism to validate authenticity and elevate their content in users’ feeds, a separate blog post said.

Monthly subscriptions will be available on Instagram and Facebook in a handful of countries to start and will expand to WhatsApp at a later date, costing $21.99 (roughly Rs. 1,800) per Facebook page or Instagram account or $34.99 (roughly Rs. 2,900) for both, according to the post. 

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RBI Increases UPI Lite Transaction Limit to Rs. 500, Proposes AI-Powered ‘Conversational Payments’

Reserve Bank of India on Thursday announced to increase the transaction payment limit from Rs. 200 to Rs. 500 for UPI Lite in offline mode. UPI Lite was first introduced in September 2022, allowing users to make transactions for a small amount limit in offline mode. Since then, the feature has been adopted by PhonePe, Paytm, and Google Pay as well. Meanwhile, a few other features including conversational payments and NFC support on UPI have also been proposed to make transactions more seamless.

RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das in a press conference today announced a couple of major changes coming to offline UPI payments and more. UPI Lite transactions limit has been proposed to be increased from Rs. 200 to Rs. 500 in offline mode. However, the overall wallet limit is retained at Rs. 2,000 only. The functionality was announced in September 2022, and it currently allows users to make offline payments of up to Rs. 200 only.

Additionally, RBI also proposed to enable “Conversational Payments” on UPI by using AI-powered systems. Users will soon be able to ask an AI-powered system to make payments. However, further details on this functionality haven’t been disclosed yet. The feature will initially be available in Hindi and English and will be made available in more Indian languages soon.

Furthermore, the RBI also announced to introduce offline payments on UPI using Near Field Communication (NFC) technology through the ‘UPI-Lite’ on-device wallet. This will help users to make payments via UPI in an internet-restricted area or low network area.

Last month, Google Pay introduced new UPI Lite services on its platform. Transactions made via the UPI Lite service on Google Pay will not require the UPI PIN and can be done with a single tap. Notably, UPI Lite doesn’t rely on real-time bank transactions and hence, can be accessed in offline mode as well. 

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WhatsApp Pay India Head Quits Within Four Months of Taking Charge

Vinay Choletti, head of WhatsApp’s India payment business, has quit the firm within four months in the role, marking the latest in a series of domestic senior-level departures at parent company Meta Platform.

“As I move on to my next adventure, I strongly believe that WhatsApp has the power to phenomenally transform digital payments and financial inclusion in India and I look forward to seeing it leverage its potential in the coming years,” Choletti wrote on LinkedIn late Tuesday.

Meta has seen a series of changes in executive roles in the recent months. WhatsApp’s India head Abhijit Bose, Meta’s public policy director in India Rajiv Aggarwal and Meta’s India head Ajit Mohan had resigned in November.

Meta did not immediately respond to Reuters request for comment.

Choletti took charge of WhatsApp Pay in India following Manesh Mahatme’s exit in September to join Amazon.

Before joining WhatsApp Pay in October 2021 as the head of Merchant Payments, Choletti had worked at Amazon for seven years, according to his LinkedIn profile.

WhatsApp, the messaging service owned by Meta, been trying to lure more Indians to its peer-to-peer payments service as it tries to ramp up in a highly competitive market and lock horns with more established payers such as Alphabet‘s Google Pay, Ant Group-backed Paytm and Walmart‘s PhonePe.

Meta was in the middle of massive layoffs last month, cutting more than 11,000 jobs or 13 percent of its workforce, as the Facebook parent doubled down on its metaverse bet amid a crumbling advertising market and decades-high inflation.

© Thomson Reuters 2022

 

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After PhonePe, Paytm Starts Taking Surcharge on Mobile Recharges

Paytm has started taking a surcharge for mobile recharges through its platform. The charge can be anywhere between Re. 1 and Rs. 6 — depending on the recharge amount. It is applicable on all Paytm mobile recharges, irrespective of the payment mode — whether done through Paytm Wallet balance or Unified Payments Interface (UPI) or bank credit or debit card. The update is notably not applicable to all users at this moment. Last year, Paytm competitor PhonePe started a pilot to charge a surcharge on mobile recharges.

According to user reports available on Twitter, Paytm started taking the surcharge as a convenience fee, though Gadgets 360 can now confirm that the additional charge is available as a platform fee. It appeared to be initially rolled out to a few users in late March. However, the sudden increase in the recent user reports suggest that the update is now applicable to a large number of users.

Gadgets 360 was able to independently verify that the surcharge is not applicable to all Paytm users at this moment. It is also important to note that the additional charge is applicable on transactions above Rs. 100.

Paytm is taking surcharge on mobile recharges from some users

 

However, the select users who have been considered as a part of the update need to pay up to Rs. 6 as an additional charge over and above the mobile recharge amount that they are paying through the Paytm app.

A person familiar with the development told Gadgets 360 that Paytm was taking the surcharge from some users as one of the experiments to grow its revenues.

In 2019, Paytm posted on Twitter to claim that it would not charge any convenience or transaction fee from customers on using any payment method which included cards, UPI, and wallet.

 

A query sent to Paytm didn’t elicit a response at the time of publishing this article.

Similar to Paytm, PhonePe in October started charging a surcharge that it calls “processing fee” to customers for mobile recharges above Rs. 50. The Walmart-owned company at the time said that the charge was applicable under a “small-scale experience” and was not affecting all users.

User reports available on social media, though, indicate that the number of users seeing the additional charge on their PhonePe account is not minuscule as hundreds of users have reported that the platform is levying the additional charge for their mobile recharges.

Both PhonePe and Paytm have yet not officially revealed the criteria that they use to pick customers for charging the additional fee.

A PhonePe spokesperson declined to comment on queries around its criteria for the experiment and the total base of its users selected for the surcharge.

Payment Council of India (PCI) Chairman Vishwas Patel told Gadgets 360 that telcos in the country recently reduced commission to around 50 percentage-in-point (pip) on transactions to the online retailers. In addition to that, he noted that if a customer was paying through a credit card, where the merchant discount rate (MDR) is 1.8 percent, it was not possible for the online retailer to process recharges.

Nevertheless, platforms including Amazon Pay and Google Pay are not charging any additional charges for mobile recharges at this moment. Some of the price-conscious users are, therefore, moving their recharge tasks to these platforms for the time being.

Telecom operators including Airtel, Vi and Jio also support mobile recharges through their native apps. The surcharge by Paytm and PhonePe could, thus, be an opportunity for telcos to incline customers towards their solutions over time.



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