New Delhi, Dec 05 (UiTV/IANS) – Bharti Airtel and Meta on Monday announced their collaboration to support the growth of India’s digital ecosystem.
Airtel partners with Meta and STC (Seychelles Trading Company) to bring 2Africa Pearls to India as part of its ongoing effort to improve the nation’s infrastructure.
2Africa is the world’s longest subsea cable system and is expected to provide faster internet connectivity to nearly 3 billion people worldwide.
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“With our contributions to the 2Africa cable and Open RAN, we are investing in crucial and progressive connectivity infrastructure which is needed to support the increasing demand for high-speed data in India. We look forward to working closely with Meta to deliver best-in-class digital experiences to our customers in India,” Vani Venkatesh, CEO, Global Business, Bharti Airtel said in a statement.
Both companies will jointly invest in global connectivity infrastructure and CPaaS (Communications Platform as a Service) based new-age digital solutions to support the emerging requirements of customers and enterprises in India.
“We look forward to continuing our collaboration with Airtel to further advance the region’s connectivity infrastructure that will enable a better network experience for people and businesses across India,” Francisco Varela, vice president of mobile partnerships for Meta said in a statement.
The company said that it will integrate Meta’s WhatsApp within its CPaaS platform.
With this integration, businesses will be able to use WhatsApp’s extensive features and reach to provide enterprises with unparalleled omnichannel customer engagement.
Razorpay allows merchants to accept credit card payments via UPI transactions
Fintech platform Razorpay on Monday announced an industry-first move to enable merchants to accept credit card transactions on unified payments interface (UPI), as the digital payments landscape witnesses a stupendous growth.
With RuPay credit cards being enabled on UPI, Razorpay merchants can begin accepting credit card payments on UPI, with minimal changes to their existing setup.
The company said that move is made possible in partnership with Axis bank, which shares Razorpay’s focus on catering to the ever-evolving needs of merchants and delivering greater convenience.
This offering is in line with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) latest innovation in the digital space, said the company. On October 4, the NPCI allowed the linking of RuPay credit cards with the BHIM UPI app.
“For this enablement to bring in the impact, the readiness of any payment gateway infrastructure is essential. Under this context, Razorpay has taken the first step towards democratising credit card transactions on UPI for our merchants,” said Shashank Kumar, MD and Co-founder, Razorpay.
Approximately 250 million Indians use UPI for their day-to-day transactions, and nearly 50 million users have one or more credit cards.
The customers of HDFC Bank, Punjab National Bank, Union Bank and Indian Bank will be the first to enjoy the benefits of this innovation, said the company.
“This will enable users to transact seamlessly with merchants across India on credit rails in line with the government’s vision to expand the structured credit infrastructure in India,” said Nalin Bansal, Chief of Corporate and Fintech Relationships and Key Initiatives, NPCI.
According to the RBI data, the credit card industry in the country has grown steadily at the rate of 30 per cent over the last three years.
“We believe this move has the potential to change the way customers make payments in the next 2-3 years,” said Sanjeev Moghe, President & Head – Cards & Payments, Axis Bank.
23.06 billion transactions of Rs 38.3 lakh crores throgh Digital payments in India: A boost to India’s digital ecosystem
The Unified Payments Interface (UPI), debit and credit cards, prepaid payment instruments like mobile wallets, and prepaid cards logged 23.06 billion transactions amounting Rs 38.3 lakh crore in the third quarter this year, a new report showed on Monday.
At the top, the UPI clocked over 19.65 billion transactions in volume and Rs 32.5 lakh crore in terms of value.
The UPI transactions volume and value almost doubled since last year as it recorded about an 88 per cent increase in volume and over 71 per cent increase in value in Q3 as compared to the same quarter last year, according to Worldline India’s ‘Digital Payments Report’ for the third quarter.
The top three UPI apps in terms of volume and value were PhonePe, Google Pay and Paytm Payments Bank App.
The top five remitter Banks were State Bank of India, HDFC Bank, Bank of Baroda, Union Bank, and ICICI Bank, whereas the top 5 beneficiary banks were Paytm Payments Bank, YES Bank, State Bank of India, Axis Bank, and ICICI Bank.
UPI person-to-merchant (P2M) and person-to-person (P2P) emerged as the most chosen payment method among consumers, accounting for 42 per cent of total transaction volume.
This was followed by credit and debit card payments, which accounted for 7 per cent of volume and 14 per cent of value.
“The swift adoption of digital payments can be witnessed with each passing quarter. Popular payment instruments like UPI, cards, PPIs are already clocking over 23 billion transactions in a quarter,” said Ramesh Narasimhan, CEO, India, Worldline.
Q3 data indicates healthy usage of credit cards and growth in the average ticket size.
For credit cards, it is Rs 4,833; for debit cards, it is Rs 2,073; for UPI P2M, it is Rs 738; for UPI, P2P it is 2,576; for prepaid cards, it is 473; and for M-wallet, it is Rs 382.
The total transaction between credit cards and debit cards comes to around 65 per cent and the remaining 35 per cent has been shared between UPI P2P, UPI P2M, and prepaid cards, the report showed.
As of September 2022, the overall number of POS terminals installed by merchant-acquiring banks had surpassed 7 million.
In Q3 2022, POS deployment increased by more than 41 per cent reaching 7.03 million, when compared to the same quarter of the previous year.
In the online space, e-commerce (shopping for goods and services), gaming, utility and financial services contributed to over 86 per cent of the transaction in terms of volume and 47 per cent in terms of value.
By the end of the third quarter, there were 1.01 billion credit and debit cards in circulation.
Credit card volume and value were 725 million and Rs 3.5 lakh crore in Q3 2022, respectively.
In the third quarter of 2022, the volume and value of debit card transactions were 907 million and Rs 1.88 lakh crore, respectively, the report said.
At least 58.78 million FASTags have been issued till September, with 36 banks.
