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Competitors
Yatra locked in arbitration over deal with Air Travel Bureau
Publication- VC Circle
Edition- Online
Date- 08 June, 2019
Nasdaq-listed travel portal Yatra Online, Inc. is locked in an arbitration over a pending transaction with corporate travel services provider Air Travel Bureau Ltd (ATB) even as one of the sellers has filed a police complaint for alleged cheating and breach of trust. Yatra said on Friday that the Economic Offences Wing of the Delhi Police registered a First Information Report on June 4 to investigate a criminal complaint previously filed by Sunil Narain, one of the key shareholders of ATB. The complaint alleged, among other things, cheating and criminal breach of trust in connection with Yatra India’s obligations under the share purchase agreement.
These developments come at a time when Yatra is being wooed for a deal by Ebix Inc. The US software firm had in March offered to acquire Yatra for $336 million (around Rs 2,350 crore) in a cash-and-stock deal aimed at boosting its portfolio of Indian travel ventures.
Ebix said that it intended to merge Yatra Online, which operates travel portal Yatra.com, with its Indian EbixCash subsidiary, which offers remittance services. Ebix had previously also acquired another Indian online travel agency Via.com.
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Industry News
Paytm Payments Bank ahead of major banks in digital transaction target
Publication- Livemint
Edition- Online
Date- 08 June, 2019
Paytm Payments Bank has received a target of 501.16 crore digital transactions for the financial year 2019-20 from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), higher than the targets set for major banks including HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and Punjab National Bank. In a statement, Paytm Payments Bank said it is only behind the State Bank of India, which has the highest target for digital transactions. Only five other banks have received a target of more than 100 crore transactions, which include HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, Punjab National Bank and Union Bank of India.
"To promote digital transactions in India, MeitY sets the target for all banks and closely monitors the progress on it. This target is significant as it is much higher than the target set for major banks like HDFC, ICICI and Punjab National Bank. It reaffirms Paytm as the leader of digital payments in the country," the statement said.
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RBI report says demonetisation, Aadhaar boosted digital payments growth in India
Publication- Times Now News
Edition- Online
Date- 08 June, 2019
After the demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes in 2016 pushed digital payments, Aadhaar-enabled electronic know your customer (eKYC) resulted in exponential growth of such payments in the country, according to a new report by the Reserve Bank of India. Transactions in which both the payer and the payee use digital modes to send and receive money are referred to as digital or electronic payments. India recorded an accelerated growth rate of over 50 per cent in the volume of retail electronic payment transactions in the last four years, said the report titled "Benchmarking India's Payment Systems". The growth in 2018-19 was largely due to the steep growth in Unified Payments Interface (UPI), it added.
"In India, the smartphone revolution has seen an explosion in digital payment options, from e-Money to the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) to a combination of the two. After demonetisation, the use of e-Money picked up on a very large scale," the findings showed.
The digital landscape changed with higher usage of e-Money, UPI, Aadhaar Payments Bridge System (APBS), RuPay, and Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS), among others. With 3,459 million e-Money transactions, India was only behind Japan and the US (data on China not available) in 2017 with respect to the volume of e-Money transactions, the report said. The study revealed that over the years, the number of debit and credit cards also increased considerably in India. India had 331.60 million and 19.55 million debit and credit cards respectively at the end of 2012. The numbers grew to 861.7 million and 37.49 million respectively at the end of 2017.
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Airtel Payments Bank enables BHIM UPI based payments at over 500,000 merchants
Publication- Rising Kashmir
Edition- Online
Date- 08 June, 2019
Airtel Payments Bank Friday said that it has enabled open loop BHIM UPI based payments at over 500,000 merchant points across India, allowing consumers to make digital payments for good and services by using any BHIM UPI enabled bank or payments app over their mobile phones. Airtel Payments Bank’s payments solution for merchants allows consumers to make instant cashless payments from their mobile phones, directly through their savings bank accounts by just scanning a merchant QR code through their preferred BHIM UPI enabled app. Airtel Payments Bank users can also use this QR to pay directly through their Savings Bank account or wallets using the Airtel Thanks app.
Consumers no longer need to go through the hassle of downloading and maintaining numerous payment apps, and can pay with any BHIM UPI enabled application of their choice. Making digital payments seamless as well as secure, Airtel Payments Bank powered BHIM UPI payments will enable customers to pay anywhere, anytime through a single interface. Airtel Payments Bank powered BHIM UPI based payments are also beneficial for the merchants since they can now easily receive payments directly into their bank account, reducing the risk of cash management for them. Further, instead of cluttering the counter with multiple modes of payment acceptance, the merchant can now have a single QR code at their shop, making it convenient for them as well as consumers. Even at the back end, the merchants now only need to manage a single application over having to manage the applications of multiple vendors.
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Not just for peers, UPI’s now choice of merchants too
Publication- ET Tech
Edition- Online
Date- 10 June, 2019
From peer-to-peer payments which dominate Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions, there seems to be a slow shift happening towards merchant transactions. While the National Payments Corp of India, which manages UPI, does not share the split between the two modes of payments, industry sources estimate around 120 million merchant payments might have happened on UPI in May. Overall UPI recorded 733 million transactions in May. If the share was around 10% couple of months back, it has grown to 15-18%, said multiple top executives in the digital payments space.
Paytm, which is the largest digital payments company in India, claims to be dominating this mode of transactions. “We have recorded between 70 million and 75 million UPI payments in May alone,” said Deepak Abbot, senior vice president at Paytm. “There has been 10% month-on-month growth in the merchant payment share in UPI and Paytm is leading the race.”
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