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As Paytm and PhonePe rule digital payments roost; Google Pay rapidly gaining market share

Although the digital revolution is fairly recent in India, it has seen exponential growth due to a favourable regulatory environment, deeper smartphone penetration and growing internet access.

Shraddha Sharma(@shraddhasharma5)
Last Updated : Jul 11, 2019 03:09 PM IST | Source: Moneycontrol.com
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Although digital payment is a fairly recent trend in India, it has seen exponential growth due to a favourable regulatory environment, deeper smartphone penetration and growing internet access as per a study by BCG and Google.

After its launch in 2010, Paytm enjoyed the first-mover's advantage and became synonymous with digital payments. The Warren Buffet-backed digital company was named the market leader in terms of number of transactions and user base with 4 billion transactions in 2017-18 and reported 350 million registered users as of June 5.

A number of fintech companies like Mobikwik, Freecharge and Citrus joined the market to benefit from a larger customer base which began demanding convenience in payments. (Showing Paytm App has the highest downloads)

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Walmart's PhonePe, which roughly translates to ‘on the phone’ in Hindi, is gaining momentum to pose as serious competition to the market leader, as per reports by Quartz. In June, PhonePe was home to 290 million transactions with an aggregate value of $85 billion, compared with 71 million transactions at $22 billion a year earlier, according to the company, as per a Bloomberg report.

Paytm and PhonePe both started as payment wallets that integrated various other functions like the united payments interface (UPI), gaming and utility payments.The ‘Paytm Karo’ jingle appeared everywhere leading to high transaction frequency, but a low value per transaction. Therefore, PhonePe has been able beat Paytm in average transaction value, but it consistently needs to grow its market share by increasing the number of mobile app downloads and widening its user-base.

The founder of BharatPe, which offers merchants a single interface for all UPI apps, tweeted-


Google Pay recorded more than 240 million transactions in May, which beat both Flipkart-owned PhonePe, which had around 230 million UPI payments last month, and Paytm having 200 million transactions as per an Economic Times report. While it might be true that GooglePay might have taken over these wallet giants in terms of value and first time in terms of volume last month, it still fights market penetration by a user base established by Paytm.

In terms of the aggregate value of transactions, the money paid through Google Pay was the highest at Rs 55,000 crore followed by PhonePe at around Rs 44,000 crore and Paytm, around Rs 38,200 crore. Due to large amount of cashbacks, GooglePay has grown in transactions, but it lacks a wallet service and stable market share in terms of users as of now. Launched early in 2018, GooglePay maybe the biggest threat to these players.

Flipkart’s board recently authorized PhonePe Pvt Ltd to become a new entity and explore raising $1 billion from outside investors at a valuation of as much as $10 billion, which might still be an undervaluation, according sources in a Bloomberg report. Also, PhonePe’ volume and value of transactions have roughly quadrupled over the past year making it a close competitor of Paytm. Paytm still has a lead in registered users and monthly active users.

Digital payments in India are projected to reach $1 trillion by 2023, up from about $200 billion currently, said a Credit Suisse Group cited by an Economic Times report . Its majority business is from peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions, and it can see an increase in business-to-business (B2B) over the years, which currently stands between 10-20 percent.

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While other digital payment companies maintain a minority share, PhonePe competes with the Paytm's first mover advantage, though it continues to diversify its array of services to remain the leader.

Whatsapp Payment service, which is awaited launch is believed to change these dynamics due to its large user base, may pose a major competition Paytm, PhonePe and GooglePay.


As Paytm and PhonePe rule digital payments roost; Google Pay rapidly gaining market share
 
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Aadhaar-enabled payment system cross 200 million transaction in July, says NPCI

1 min read . Updated: 12 Aug 2019, 03:19 PM IST Shayan Ghosh
  • According to NPCI, in July, the transaction count of Aadhaar-enabled payment system (AePS) stood at 220.18 million
  • AePS is a bank-led model which allows basic interoperable banking transactions at point of sale terminals (PoS)
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AePS crossing 200 million transactions mark is a significant achievement for NPCI, (iStock)

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) on Monday said transactions through the Aadhaar-enabled payment system (AePS) have crossed 200 million in July.

AePS, the statement said, is a bank-led model which allows basic interoperable banking transactions at point of sale terminals (PoS) through the business correspondent of any bank by using Aadhaar authentication.

According to NPCI, in July, the transaction count of AePS stood at 220.18 million with transaction value ₹9,685.35 crore compared with a transaction count of 194.33 million and a transaction value of ₹8,867.33 crore in June.

“AePS crossing 200 million transactions mark is a significant achievement for NPCI, benefiting financial inclusion in India. AePS is delivering the '4As' for financial inclusion to rural part of India, authentication of customer, availability of the services, accessibility through AePS channel and affordability as it’s free of cost to the customers," said Praveena Rai, chief operating officer, NPCI.

The statement added that AePS empowers a bank customer to use Aadhaar as his/her identity to access the respective Aadhaar-enabled bank account and perform basic banking transactions like cash withdrawal, fund transfers and balance enquiry.

“The only inputs required for a customer to do an AePS transaction are the name of the customer’s bank, Aadhaar number and fingerprint captured during their enrollment," the statement said.

Aadhaar-enabled payment system cross 200 million transaction in July, says NPCI
 
'Indian Mastercard' set to launch in the UAE, says envoy

Wed 21 Aug 2019 06:31 PM

Navdeep Singh Suri, the Indian Ambassador to the UAE, says RuPay will be launched in the UAE during visit of PM Narenda Modi
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The UAE will be the first country in the Middle East to witness the launch of RuPay card, the Indian indigenous equivalent of Mastercard or Visa, during the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi this weekend, a top Indian diplomat has said.

Navdeep Singh Suri, the Indian Ambassador to the UAE, told state news agency WAM that a memorandum of understanding to establish a technology interface between the payment platforms in India and UAE would be exchanged between the National Payments Corporation of India and UAE’s Mercury Payments Services.

"This will enable the RuPay card to be used at point-of-sale terminals across the UAE," Suri said in an interview on Wednesday.

"The UAE is the largest and most vibrant business hub in the region. It hosts the largest Indian community, receives the largest number of Indian tourists and has the largest trade with India. By becoming the first country in the region to introduce the RuPay card, we expect that each of these elements of tourism, trade and the Indian diaspora will benefit," he added.

The UAE will be the third country to launch RuPay outside India after Singapore and Bhutan, the envoy said.

"We will have substantive bilateral discussions to further deepen our relationship across multiple sectors during the Prime Minister’s visit," Suri said.

Ahead of Modi’s visit, the Indian Embassy has completed establishing the system to issue India’s newly introduced 5-year multiple entry tourism and business visa for Emiratis, he added.

Modi will receive the Zayed Medal, the UAE’s highest civilian award, during the visit.

Suri also said that bilateral trade touched almost $60 billion last year.

"On the investment side, we have already seen sizable inflows from India to UAE in free zones like Jebel Ali, Hamriyah Free Zone Sharjah and Ras Al Khaimah Economic Zone and also in sectors ranging from manufacturing and real estate to trade and services. We have now started to observe a strong flow of investments from the UAE to India. These are particularly significant in areas such as energy, infrastructure, housing, highways, airports, logistics, food processing and the defence sector," he added.


'Indian Mastercard' set to launch in the UAE, says envoy
 
Aadhaar card for NRIs coming soon. 5 things to know about UIDAI's new plan

1 min read . Updated: 02 Sep 2019, 09:42 AM IST Staff Writer
  • UIDAI will soon issue a notification to announce changes in allotment of Aadhaar numbers to NRIs
  • Currently, NRIs have to stay for at least 182 days in the last 12 months to be eligible to get an Aadhaar card.

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NRIs will soon be able to get an Aadhaar card upon arrival in India.

Following announcement by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her budget speech two months ago, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is gearing up to ready its infrastructure to issue Aadhaar cards to non-resident Indians (NRIs) holding Indian passports on their arrival in the country.

5 things to know about UIDAI's plan to issue Aadhaar cards to NRIs:

1) The Aadhaar-issuing body has said its systems will be ready within the next three months to offer the facility of issuing Aadhaar cards to NRIs with Indian passports without the mandatory 180 days waiting period.

2) UIDAI systems are being readied for the facility and necessary legal measures are to be notified soon, UIDAI CEO Ajay Bhushan Pandey told PTI. UIDAI will take about three months to tune its systems to offer the facility to NRIs.

3) "We are working to make the appropriate technological changes and we will provide an appointment facility where people outside the country also can apply for a time slot and specify the place they would like to go to get their Aadhaar made...as soon as they come to India they can, very conveniently, go and get their Aadhaar made," Pandey told PTI.

4) In her Budget speech on July 5, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said: "I propose to consider issuing Aadhaar card for Non-Resident Indians with Indian Passports after their arrival in India, without waiting for 180 days."

5) Under current regulations, one can apply for Aadhaar card only if he or she has stayed in India for at least 182 days in the last 12 months. The government is likely to issue a notification making an amendment in the Aadhaar Act, 2016.

Aadhaar card for NRIs coming soon. 5 things to know about UIDAI's new plan
 
India is using hundreds of drones to map the country in incredible detail

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Using a fleet of drones, India plans to map 75% of the country by 2021. Image: REUTERS/Henry Nicholls.

How do you map one of the largest countries in the world? One drone at a time, perhaps. That’s exactly what the Indian government is doing, with the Survey of India (SoI) using a fleet of drones to map the country in incredible detail.

One of the first areas being surveyed is the Ganges river basin, which is being mapped with an accuracy of 10 cm, according to Professor Ashutosh Sharma of India’s Department of Science & Technology.

“The basis for everything”

A fleet of 300 drones is being gathered to capture aerial footage, which will be combined with other data sources and then converted into highly detailed maps using artificial intelligence.

“Even today we don't have a digital map of India of sufficient accuracy,” Professor Sharma told the Times of India. “But this is [going to be] the basis for everything... whether we have to lay down train tracks, lay a road, put up a hospital ... or any kind of development and planning.”

The new maps will have a scale of 1:500, meaning 1 cm will represent 5 metres on the ground. Mapping remote towns and villages in this detail will give local authorities accurate data relating to land ownership. In some cases, it is believed this will enable citizens to have verified land-ownership claims leading to the issuance of property titles for the first time.

Between now and 2021, the Indian project – which also brings together data from multiple sources – will map 75% of the country. The initial focus areas will be those that are populated – regions that are mostly forest or desert, for example, may be excluded from the exercise.

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Image: Statista

Transformative effect

Highly detailed and digital maps can help countries and communities around the world to pinpoint problems, find solutions and protect their future.

They can provide crucial information to aid groups in disaster zones, such as during the rescue effort in the aftermath of the huge earthquake that hit Nepal in 2015; help to protect the world’s forests and determine who’s responsible for areas of land to tackle illegal mining, logging and forest fires; and could even be used to help predict and prevent floods.

The United Nations Development Programme has said it will use digital technologies to transform the way it tackles issues such as poverty and climate change.

It is also using drones to create 3D maps of the Maldives – a country extremely vulnerable to the risks of climate change.

India is using hundreds of drones to map the country in incredible detail
 
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India takes baby steps towards tech regulation

5 min read . Updated: 06 Oct 2019, 11:50 PM IST Sumit Chakraberty
  • From a UPI payments market share cap to data protection, India is working to protect users without killing innovation
  • Calls to regulate tech to prevent monopoly and protect consumers grow more strident, but the ways to do it are unclear
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India is trying to draw on the benefit of digital transformation that Big Tech companies bring without letting them abuse their position. (istockphoto)

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is reported to be considering a 33% market share cap on payment apps that use the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). The move comes in the wake of the looming dominance of Google Pay.

Google Pay and Walmart’s PhonePe were the most downloaded fintech apps worldwide last year, according to mobile app tracker Sensor Tower. Industry reports indicate they account for over two-thirds of UPI transactions. Alibaba-backed Paytm is a distant third, after being the leader until late last year. The plethora of other UPI-based payment apps, including NPCI’s BHIM, are seeing their share dwindle.

NPCI is an umbrella organization that was created by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to enable seamless mobile payments between multiple banks via UPI. Seeing the tepid uptake of bank apps, RBI made provisions to let Google use UPI to enter India’s payments market two years ago. The government was keen to give a boost to digital transactions which can be tracked, broaden financial inclusion, and catalyse economic growth.

But now it appears to be doing a double take at the prospect of a duopoly of US companies riding on India’s unique public infrastructure for digital payments. If the UPI market cap is enforced, it will be one of the most significant antitrust action so far to curb Big Tech in India.

Google executives in India have been quick to discourage the step in media statements, claiming it would stifle innovation and go against the government’s objective of bringing hundreds of millions more into digital payments. The move would deny a new consumer the choice of using the app they prefer. So it’s not clear how such a market share cap can be enforced without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

REGULATORY DILEMMA

The NPCI move and Google’s reaction bring to the fore in India a dilemma that regulators worldwide are grappling with: how to benefit from the digital transformation that big tech companies bring without letting the leading ones become so dominant that they can abuse their position.

The European Union has so far fined Google $9.3 billion for dubious practices like manipulating search results to push its own products and services, shutting out competitors in its contracts with advertisers, and so on. Last month, 50 states in the US launched an investigation into Google’s “potential monopolistic behaviour" and its effect on smaller companies. The $820-billion search giant dominates online advertising, hogging nearly one-third of global digital ad spend, estimates eMarketer.

Adding payment transactions in India, Google gets into a stronger position to profile consumers, manipulate behaviour, and help advertisers target them. The world over, consumers love the convenience of “free services" like search, payments, e-commerce and social media. But there is also growing awareness of a lack of control over how their data is used or the ways in which their internet use is mediated.

India is mulling a data protection law, inspired by the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). But it’s unclear what could be a viable middle ground for India, which is neither the tight control of Europe nor the laissez faire of the US.

“It’s in India’s strategic interest to encourage entrepreneurship and unshackle innovation. You can’t have regulations that impinge on that in a significant way. So it will be important to state that objective as clearly as preserving citizens’ fundamental rights to privacy," says Punit Shukla, who co-authored the national strategy on artificial intelligence at government think tank NITI Aayog before moving to World Economic Forum as a project lead on global tech governance.

Another grey area he points out is the clamour for global tech companies to store data on Indian citizens locally. “That argument has taken on a nationalistic tone unnecessarily. Privacy can be invaded even if all the data is stored locally," says Shukla. “We should also look at whether our startups will be hindered in global markets if other countries adopt similar policies."

Privacy has less to do with where the data is stored than what is stored and how it is encrypted, processed and shared. While calls to regulate tech to prevent monopoly and protect consumers grow more strident, the ways to do it are unclear.

In the pushback against Big Tech, it’s easy to lose sight of how UPI transactions took off after Google Pay launched on 18 September, 2017. The number of UPI transactions had reached a modest 16 million in August that year despite its adoption by Paytm, PhonePe, BHIM and several other apps since its rollout in April 2016.

Monthly UPI transactions nearly doubled to 30 million in September 2017, crossed 100 million in November 2017, and hit the 500 million mark a year later. Last month, the number was 955 million, NPCI data showed.

UPI scores heavily over mobile wallets in higher value transactions, according to RedSeer. The total value of mobile wallet transactions in the last financial year was ₹1.84 trillion; UPI transaction value was nearly five times that amount. But wallets like Paytm may stage a comeback if top UPI apps are hamstrung by market caps.

One can attribute the rise of UPI to Big Tech’s money power to acquire users with cashbacks. But it has a lot to do with being user-friendly and hooking users with gamification such as Google Pay’s “scratch cards". Users get scratch cards for sending or receiving money, and follow instructions for a chance to win a cash reward.

INDIAN WAY

“American tech companies have started to understand Indian consumers better. Google and Amazon have gone the deepest and to some extent WhatsApp, although it is limited by its service being encrypted," says Sahil Kini, co-founder of fintech infrastructure startup Setu, who was earlier a member of the IndiaStack team that built Aadhaar and UPI. “Google is introducing India-specific apps. Google Pay in India is different from other countries. They’ve established a unit to build products for the so-called next billion users, half of whom will be from India."

Privacy regulators also need a deep dive to understand the behaviour of users to ensure their needs are served. Communication consultant Erica Diya Basu, who is currently researching internet governance at American University, finds little evidence that even civil society advocates of privacy in India have drilled down to the user level to see how they’re interacting with technology. “This space is heavily populated by people from the legal and technology spheres. It’s only now in the past year that others from the social and behavioural sciences are being included in the debate," she says.

India has an opportunity to create its own tech regulation framework suited to its society and economy, just as it did with citizen ID and mobile payments. It’s important to do it well because India will have the largest number of people coming online outside China.

Sumit Chakraberty is a contributing editor with Mint. Write to him at [email protected]

India takes baby steps towards tech regulation
 
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