Spice Money: Industry Monitoring 09 April 2019
- Priyanka Kanodia
- Apr 10, 2019
- 4 min read
Spice Money
Industry News
PhonePe eyes in-app merchants for its growth
Publication- ET Tech
Edition- Online
Date- 09 April, 2019
Bengaluru-based digital payments major PhonePe is targeting in-app merchants for its next round of growth, with adoption and usage seeing a considerable jump within a year of starting this category. What started a year ago with apps like Ola and Redbus, which allowed cab and bus bookings on the platform through the PhonePe application, has now grown into 35 applications within the UPI payments application. The company is targeting 1,000 apps by the end of this year. “We are bringing in applications across categories like food delivery, hyperlocal deliveries, travel and entertainment to create an open ecosystem platform,” said Rituraj Rautela, head of apps platform at PhonePe. “We are speeding up our integration processes in a way that we have integrated with 10 applications over the last 10 days.” PhonePe is now eyeing the gaming category, which is growing rapidly, and has recently tied up with MPL (Mobile Premier League) which has Virat Kohli as its brand ambassador.
“As of now, more than 60 to 70% of the users are using categories like travel and commute on the app, but now the trend is shifting and we are expecting it to reverse to other categories like food delivery, gaming and hyperlocal by June,” said Rautela. He said PhonePe’s partners are seeing 20% higher conversion rate, with customers entering the platform actually converting that into a transaction through the in-app categories. Rautela said “60 to 85% of the traffic is now being driven by new set of customers which helps mandate our proposition for our partner merchants.” While the number of transactions through PhonePe is growing at 50% month-on-month, the company wants to lower the average value of transactions further to attract more micro transactions through the application.
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WhatsApp to comply with central bank regulations on storage of payment data
Publication- ET Tech
Edition- Online
Date- 09 April, 2019
WhatsApp is working to comply with central bank regulations on storage of payment data, according to two people familiar with the development, indicating a turnaround in the stance adopted by the Facebook-owned messaging application, which has resisted demands to store payment data of Indian users exclusively within the country, so far. WhatsApp’s payment feature called WhatsApp Pay has been in a beta mode since February last year and has been restricted to only 1 million users in the country, pending regulatory approvals. "We plan to comply with RBI guidelines. Only some engineering work is left," a senior Facebook executive told ET. This will mean that servers holding financial data of Indian users will now be located inside the country alone.
Until now, the American company has been seeking approval to merely mirror or copy payments data within India, while also storing the same data in its overseas servers. Indian regulators have had no truck with this plan insisting that in order to be fully compliant, WhatsApp must locate all servers used to store financial data pertaining to Indian users within the country, as mandated by the Reserve Bank of India in April 2018. Last month, in an affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court, the banking regulator stated that WhatsApp had not complied with the data localisation norms laid down by it. "WhatsApp has realised that there is no way to get away with it,” said a senior official with the Ministry of Electronics and IT. “We still don’t have it in writing though," the official said. WhatsApp Pay is designed to run on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) created by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). This allows users to conduct peer-to-peer and business transactions for even micro payments through their bank accounts.
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Using an e-wallet? Keep this in mind to keep your money safe
Publication- Times Now News
Edition- Online
Date- 09 April, 2019
With technological advancement banking, mode of transaction has also modernized. People are not required to carry cash everywhere. From online food ordering, shopping to cab booking, one can now pay using UPI or digital wallets. Digital wallets commonly known as e-wallets allow people to carry out monetary transactions electronically. E-wallet helps you not only pay for stuff, but it also stores your concert/movie/event tickets, bus and metro passes and gift cards. It may be noted that retailers often reward your loyalty by offering instant freebies, discounts, coupons and cashbacks. These wallets also store a user's information like credentials, bank accounts, card information, transaction history, personal details etc. As digital wallets are becoming more common among the young population in the country, fraudsters and scammers have been targetting these people.
While e-wallets are secure with proper authentication processes in place, sometimes scammers are still able to fool people and steal money from their digital wallets. A recent Times of India report mentioned how two Ola Money wallet users were scammed by an Ola driver into sharing their OTP which led to them losing Rs 10,000 and Rs 4,000 respectively. There are several digital wallets in India like PayTm, MobiKwik, PhonePe, Airtel Money, Ola Money, Jio Money, Amazon Pay and more.
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