Spice Money
Competitors
PayNearby crosses daily 1 million transactions mark
Publication- BW Disrupt
Edition- Online
Date- 12 June, 2019
PayNearby, India’s leading hyperlocal FinTech network, has achieved the milestone of daily 1 million transactions on its platform. This achievement goes hand in hand with the company’s mission to empower kiranastore owners, termed as ‘Digital Pradhans’, while facilitating mass scale financial inclusion in India. Since its inception in 2016, PayNearby has empowered over 527,239 retailers panIndia, enabling them to provide banking and financial services to over 4.28 crore citizens across the country. Through its platform, PayNearby enables local retail stores to provide basic digital financial and non-financial services such as Aadhaar ATM, SMS Payment, EMI Collection, Khata Service, Prepaid Cards and soon activating Mutual Funds, small deposits& Insurance and UPI transactions amongst others. The company’s primary aim has been to enable assisted digital financial services to the masses which are tech oblivious.
The company works on sachetizing, granularising and universalising the high end technology for benefit of the low income segments along with under banked or unbanked population. With its roadmap for pre-calibrated relevant service offerings for this segment, PayNearby has made it possible for every person to utilise digital payments and banking services with ease at a nearby retailer by harnessing the new age contextual technology in an agile manner.
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Industry News
Move to ban cryptocurrency has Indian blockchain firms worried
Publication- The Economic Times
Edition- Online
Date- 12 June, 2019
An industry report on the Indian blockchain sector has raised concerns around a draft proposal by the government to ban cryptocurrency and regulate digital currencies, echoing previous criticism by industry stakeholders and entrepreneurs. According to the yet-to-be-released report compiled by Blockchained India, illegitimate transactions, evasion of taxes and lack of talent are some of the other critical problems plaguing the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry, primarily due to a lack of regulations. A government official told ET in April that the draft of the ‘Banning of Cryptocurrencies and Regulation of Official Digital Currencies Bill 2019’ has been circulated to relevant departments. Last week, media reports suggested that holding, selling or dealing in cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin could entail 10 years in jail.
A Right to Information query filed by blockchain lawyer Varun Sethi, however, showed that the Reserve Bank of India had not issued any such circular. It also had not received any communication from the government with regard to such a draft. “No official announcement has been made yet and such a draft will take time to become law, especially if it is not a policy priority for the new government,” said Anirudh Rastogi, managing partner at law firm Ikigai. Nischal Shetty, CEO of Mumbaibased cryptocurrency exchange WazirX, said the “Internet and Mobile Association of India is looking to discuss the regulations with the new government but it’s bound to take some time”.
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Is receiving money from friend through e-wallet taxable?
Publication- The Economic Times
Edition- Online
Date- 12 June, 2019
With the time to file your income tax return coming nearer, it is important to know which receipts other than salary are taxable and which are not. Here, we'll look at some common forms of non-salary receipts; receiving money in your e-wallet, cashback rewards, gift vouchers received as reward or gifts, interest received on bank savings and FDs, mutual fund gains. We will look at how they are to be assessed, and whether you need to pay taxes on them.
1. Receiving money in your e-wallet Through e-wallets and UPI, it has become easy to send and receive money through your phone. Often, debts to friends may be settled in this manner. For example, you're at a restaurant with your friends, and you pay the whole bill, while everyone pays you through an app or via UPI. Do such receipts need to be declared in your returns? Simply, such receipts may be treated as gifts, and gifts up to a sum of Rs 50,000 are exempt from gift tax. But if bigger amounts are transferred between friends, the entire amount will be subject to tax. If the receipts of your wallets or savings account are settlements of debts owed to you, you don't need to pay taxes on them. However, in case there is further scrutiny of your accounts by the Income Tax Department, you may want to take a written note from your debtors stating that the transaction was indeed a settlement of debts.
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Payswiff, Mastercard join hands for digital payments
Publication- Business Standard
Edition- Online
Date- 12 June, 2019
Payswiff, an omnichannel payment processing and tax-compliance solutions provider, on Tuesday signed a strategic alliance with Mastercard to speed up acceptance and adoption of digital payments in India. The alliance will cut across non-traditional distribution channels to promote low-cost payments acceptance solutions beyond the top eight cities in the country, said Payswiff. Payswiff's SET, a mobile application, allows individuals and business owners to accept payments using more than 60 payment options, including credit cards and debit cards, e-wallets, e-payment links, UPI, Bharat QR and multi-bank EMI.
Mastercard will work with Payswiff on an omnichannel distribution strategy to provide the app, services and support in regional languages, especially in areas where Point-of-Sale (PoS) machines are not easily accessible. The partners will also focus on innovation and addition of new functionalities such as asame-day' and ainstant' merchant settlements. This will hugely benefit the micro merchants in small cities as they will be able to unlock additional revenue streams using embedded features in the app such as mobile recharges, utility bill payments, and bus ticketing. "SET encourages individual business owners, small retail stores, cab drivers, quick service restaurants and several other businesses to accept digital payments.AWe are excited to partner with Mastercard toAbring these people to the formal economy and pave new avenues for their growth," saidAPriti Shah, Co-founder and CEO, Payswiff Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
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Payswiff, Mastercard join hands for digital payments in India
Publication- Livemint
Edition- Online
Date- 12 June, 2019
Payswiff, an omnichannel payment processing and tax-compliance solutions provider, on Tuesday signed a strategic alliance with Mastercard to speed up acceptance and adoption of digital payments in India. The alliance will cut across non-traditional distribution channels to promote low-cost payments acceptance solutions beyond the top eight cities in the country, said Payswiff. Payswiff's SET, a mobile application, allows individuals and business owners to accept payments using more than 60 payment options, including credit cards and debit cards, e-wallets, e-payment links, UPI, Bharat QR and multi-bank EMI. Mastercard will work with Payswiff on an omnichannel distribution strategy to provide the app, services and support in regional languages, especially in areas where Point-of-Sale (PoS) machines are not easily accessible.
The partners will also focus on innovation and addition of new functionalities such as a 'same-day' and an 'instant' merchant settlements. This will hugely benefit the micro merchants in small cities as they will be able to unlock additional revenue streams using embedded features in the app such as mobile recharges, utility bill payments, and bus ticketing. "SET encourages individual business owners, small retail stores, cab drivers, quick service restaurants and several other businesses to accept digital payments.AWe are excited to partner with Mastercard to bring these people to the formal economy and pave new avenues for their growth," said Priti Shah, Co-founder and CEO, Payswiff Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
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How Modi govt is planning to fully digitise payments through Jan Dhan, DBT and RuPay cards
Publication- The Financial Express
Edition- Online
Date- 12 June, 2019
The Reserve Bank of India has taken a major step to boost digital transactions by scrapping the charges on fund transfers through RTGS and NEFT. The removal of transaction fee on digital payments was one of the recommendations of the high-level committee constituted by the RBI for deepening of digital payment. The five-member committee chaired by Nandan Nilekani was set up in January to study the level of digitisation of payments in the country, identify problems in the payments ecosystem and recommend ways to resolve them. The Modi government’s focus on Digital India was not just about digitising the system of governance, but also for developing technologies and efficiencies in the payment system. The committee deliberated on the existing reports on the issue and discussed with all stakeholders to understand the hurdles faced in digital payment modes.
The committee was tasked with segregating payment modes—government to merchant, government to people and vice versa from people to people and people to merchant interfaces. As far as the transactions involving the government are concerned, the system is in place to an extent after the spread of Jan Dhan accounts, RuPay cards and direct benefit transfers. However, the last mile connectivity needs some fine-tuning. Thus, payments to and from the government can be fully digitised in a two-year timeline.
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Paytm enjoys 60% market share in UPI-based merchant payments: report
Publication- Medianama
Edition- Online
Date- 12 June, 2019
Paytm clams to have processed 70 million UPI based merchant transactions out of the total 120 million transactions in the country in May 2019, reports Mint. The digital payments firm said that it was the “leader” in merchant-based UP transactions with 60% of the total market share, and seeing a 10% monthly growth rate in this segment. The company also claimed that 12 million offline merchants accepted payments via Paytm BHIM UPI. Paytm’s senior VP Deepak Abbott told ET that the firm is planning to invest around Rs 200 crore to expand its retail merchant base, adding that Paytm plans to reach 25 million merchants from its current 10 million merchants by the end of 2019. This development means that Paytm’s competitors that include the likes of PhonePe, Mobikwik, Google Pay, PayPal and Razorpay among others have to fight for a tiny share of the pie. Here’s what some of them have been up to for establishing a foothold in UPI-based merchant payments:
PhonePe
Flipkart owned PhonePe didn’t share its numbers for recorded merchant payments, but told ET that merchant payments had increased multiple times since the beginning of this year. Yuvraj Singh Shekhawat, head of offline business growth at PhonePe said more than 5 million merchants spread across 150 cities have been using PhonePe’s service. Some of the initiatives that PhonePe has taken up to drive merchant payments are:
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Digital payments firm BharatPe appoints Chief Business Officer to push into lending
Publication- People Matters
Edition- Online
Date- 12 June, 2019
Digital payments firm BharatPe, which onboards micro merchants for Unified Payments Interface-based transactions, has appointed Pratekk Agarwaal as its Chief Business Officer to lead its push into lending. The company, which first started with onboarding merchants for UPI payments through quick response (QR) codes, is now making a foray into lending and other financial services for merchants. Pratekk will be responsible for driving this vertical. Pratekk has more than 18 years of experience, having worked across financial services companies like Indostar Capital, Bajaj Capital, and Fullerton India. He also cofounded Selfin in December 2016 to work on financial management, insurance, and lending.
Pratekk’s appointment comes as the company was looking to drive credit for more than 5 million merchants within the next one year and will be investing steadily in promoting this vertical and making top level hires. The startup which is backed by Sequoia Capital, Insight Partners, and Beenext, has raised around $17.5 Mn since inception and is in talks to raise about $75-100 Mn from three new investors.
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