Telecom operator Bharti Airtel said US-based payments processor Mastercard will invest $100 mln (Rs 730 cr) into its Africa mobile payments business. The announcement comes two weeks after TPG Group invested $200 mn in Airtel Money Africa. The latest agreement values Airtel Africa’s mobile money business at $2.65bn on a cash and debt free basis, […]
State Bank of India and Hitachi Payment Services announced the start of operations of their payment processing venture in India as India’s largest bank tries to stay on top of the merchant-payment business. Hitachi took a 26% stake in SBI Payments in January for an undisclosed amount. SBI Payments was already India’s biggest merchant-enabler payment […]
PhonePe, the payment app backed by Flipkart, announced that it has crossed the 1 mln merchants milestone and plans to add another five million this year. This is likely to help the company narrow the gap with market leader PayTM, which had an estimated 10 mln (1 cr) merchants in its network as of late […]
Infibeam Avenues, one of India’s largest home-grown e-commerce companies, reported a standalone loss of Rs 14 cr for the first quarter due to a sharp increase in payment gateway charges. While operating revenue for the Apr-Jun quarter increased sequentially by Rs 5.3 cr to Rs 91.34 cr, payment gateway charges jumped by a whopping Rs […]
Finance minister Arun Jaitley blamed a ‘sudden and unusual’ increase in the demand for cash for causing a scarcity in currency notes in some states. Commenting on the reports that banks are running short of cash in many states such as Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, Jaitley said he has reviewed the […]
E-commerce solutions provider Infibeam said its unit Avenues India, which operates the payment service CCAvenue, has entered the bill payment service with the launch of a new service BillAvenue. The service has been built atop the Bharat Bill Payment System created by the National Payments Corporation of India, which also created the UPI money transfer […]
The ongoing rollout of Bharat QR and other mobile payment systems could result in some pain for banks as it could make it harder for their card or PoS business to become profitable. According to an estimate by the State Bank of India, card swipe transactions cost significantly more than Bharat QR and mobile transactions, […]
Online payment company PayPal has selected five startups – Finbox, Neoeyed, Paymatrix, Scalend and Tybo – for inclusion into its incubator program in Chennai. The program offers startups technology counsel and mentorship, infrastructure support and networking opportunities with both investors and customers. In addition to these, PayPal will also be picking up a stake in […]
State Bank of India said it was enabling payment by Samsung Pay service on some of its higher debit card variants. Samsung Pay works by mimicking the ‘swiping’ action of a credit or debit card by sending a magnetic pulse. The ‘card machine’ or point of sale machine mistakes this for an actual swipe and […]
The demonetization of currency notes late last year has doubled the number of card transactions and helped push India’s payment digitisation by three years, State Bank of India said in a note. “Even after seven months post demonetization, the transaction value is quite large and approximately double of what it had been corresponding month last […]
Axis Bank confirmed it had sold its 8% share in new-generation card-swiping-machine company Mswipe Technologies. In a regulatory filing, the private sector bank said it sold its 8% stake for Rs 80.94 cr, or Rs 4,249 per share. Mswipe is one of the new generation, low-cost swipe-machine companies, and offers cheaper rates to merchants. Instead […]
SpiceJet has chosen HSBC Bank as its partner for receiving UPI payments on its website. UPI or Unified Payments Interface is an advanced, easy-to-use, cheap and real-time payment platform designed by the National Payments Corporation of India. Unlike more expensive payment options such as Visa and Mastercard, UPI is available to most banking users in […]
The rush of last-minute recharges for availing Reliance Jio’s Prime Membership offer seems to have taken down Billdesk, one of India’s largest payment processing services. As of 10:40 AM, both the Billdesk website and the payment gateway service has been down for several minutes. Billdesk is the provider of payment processing services for Jio’s website […]
