Major Decisions Taken By RBI MPC in October 2023 Meeting

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the country’s central bank and banking regulator, today announced major policy decisions taken at its bi-monthly monetary policy review meeting held during 3rd to 5th October. While the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) kept key rates unchanged in its rate setting review, the policy measures announced cover significant areas […]

ICICI Bank’s Pockets becomes first wallet admitted to UPI network

ICICI Bank’s Pockets wallet has become the first financial institution in India to be permitted to offer UPI IDs in its own name and make transactions directly without routing it via a bank account. So far, UPI IDs were reserved only for those who have an account with any recognized Indian bank, including co-operative banks. […]

Tech-savvy scammers try to steal flood relief donations

Even as a large part of the country grapples with torrential rain and floods, scammers have set up fake bank IDs to get their hands on at least a part of the donations meant for disaster relief. For example, the original UPI ID for donating to Kerala’s disaster relief fund is keralacmdrf@sbi. However, given that […]

Xiaomi launches Mi Pay wallet in India with ICICI Bank

India’s largest smartphone maker Xiaomi has launched Mi Pay, its payment service, in India, marking the first time the service has been expanded beyond its home market of China. The company will use the National Payment Corporation of India’s UPI and Bharat Bill payment network for its core functionality. The company has tied up with […]

Flipkart’s PhonePe eyes PayTM as it readies to sign up half a crore merchants in 2019

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 […]

Don’t ignore cards in the era of mobile payments – SBI

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, […]

SBI enables Samsung Pay for some of its debit cards

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 […]

Demonetization took India forward by 3 years – SBI

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 […]

SpiceJet chooses HSBC as its UPI partner

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 […]

Credit, debit card fraud down sharply this year in India

Incidents of fraud and theft involving credit and debit cards have fallen sharply in the current financial year, according to data for the first nine months provided by the Reserve Bank of India. While the exact reasons for the sharp decrease is not known, banks in India have been putting in more and more precautions after […]

Freecharge ties up with ICICI Bank to offer POS services

Snapdeal-owned FreeCharge has tied up with ICICI Bank’s Merchant Services, which will allow consumers to pay their bill at over 1 Lakh ICICI stores with their Freecharge accounts. These merchants are located at across 700 cities and towns in India, the company said. “FreeCharge’s partnership with ICICI Merchant Services, powered by First Data, will ease […]

ICICI Bank is the first with UPI app for merchants

While nearly all the major banks with the exception of SBI and HDFC have come up with UPI apps for regular users, ICICI Bank has gone a step further by bringing out an app specially dedicated to merchants. The app requires a current account with ICICI Bank to operate, and any small merchant or shopkeeper […]

SBI starts accepting UPI payments

State Bank of India, India’s largest bank, has started accepting UPI payments from customers of other banks. However, outgoing payments are yet to be enabled from an SBI account to other accounts. UPI refers to a new way of making instant payments. Instead of entering details such as bank account number and IFSC code, Unified […]

HPCL, Aditya Birla Fashion to start accepting ICICI Bank’s UPI payments

ICICI Bank said it has tied up with Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd and Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Limited to offer UPI based payments their retail outlets. The bank also said it has become the first in India to have 1 lakh registered virtual payment addresses under the platform. UPI, or unified payment interface, is […]