Spice Money: Industry Monitoring 25 to 27 May 2019
- Priyanka Kanodia
- Jun 10, 2019
- 4 min read
Competitors
Digital battle for kiranas to get tough with Jio’s PoS
Publication- The Economic Times
Edition- Online
Date- 27 May, 2019
The launch of Reliance Jio Infocomm’s point of sale (PoS) terminal is set to intensify competition among payment companies seeking to win over the kirana store, a key battleground in the digital economy wars. The PoS machine — or card swipe terminal — is integral to Reliance Jio Infocomm’s plan to create an ecosystem around small merchants. Rivals Paytm, PhonePe and GooglePay are stepping up their game with the aim of creating a web of services — payments, supply chain and working capital financing — by integrating these functions around the terminal.
“Reliance Industries seems to have entered the space by providing MPoS terminals to small retailers at a highly subsidised price (actual cost per terminal $170),” the SBI Caps Securities note said. “It is likely to provide various integrated solutions around PoS terminals, such as payments with Jio Money and supply chain management. While this move may open up the PoS terminal market significantly, driven by low price points and integrated services, there may be concerns regarding the sustainability of the business model due to high investments, subsidy approach, and depth of consumer touch points.
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Industry News
Amazon bets big on payments in India
Publication- The Economic Times
Edition- Online
Date- 26 May, 2019
Last month, Amazon India announced, without much noise, that it would allow Amazon Pay users to transfer money to each other through Unified Payments Interface (UPI), one of the most popular routes for making online transactions in the country. It is the ecommerce giant’s biggest recent decision in the digital payments segment, marking its entry in what promises to be a global battle for this market. Amazon Pay will jostle for a bigger slice of peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions against incumbents Paytm, which is backed by Alibaba and Soft-Bank, Flipkart’s PhonePe, and Google Pay, besides potential entrants such as Facebook owned WhatsApp and Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio. Among the countries of its prime focus globally, Jeff Bezos-led Amazon is betting most aggressively in the payments business in India.
The push follows huge investments in its ecommerce operations: the company has pumped in Rs 27,290 crore in the flagship unit Amazon Seller Services. Amazon Pay has received capital infusion of Rs 2,771 crore since its launch in 2016, according to regulatory filings sourced from Tofler, a business intelligence platform. More than half of this capital was injected in 2018 as Amazon changed gears to bolster its payments business quickly. The company has increased the investment as part of efforts to woo customers with cashback offers, even as it continues to launch new products to cater to every class of Amazon users in India, according to three people aware of the developments.
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Improved user interface, fewer apps help boost govt’s e-governance initiative
Publication- Livemint
Edition- Online
Date- 26 May, 2019
Pawan Kumar is a happy man. He has just got his passport renewed using the mPassport Seva app. He says that it is easy to use, and has the facility to apply, pay and schedule an appointment. “You needn’t have access to a computer to apply for a passport now," says Kumar. The mPassport Seva is just one of the many apps that the government has launched to drive digital transformation and mobile governance in India.
Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM) is one such app that is aimed at making Indians go cashless. BHIM lets users make simple, easy and quick transactions using the Unified Payments Interface platform. It is available in 13 vernacular languages, is live on 111 banks and has clocked 43 million app downloads until April 2019. The number of transactions on the app was at 14.9 million in March 2019, while the total value of the transactions stood at ₹6,417 crore, according to National Payments Corporation of India data. “BHIM took its cues from Paytm, focusing on ease of use. BHIM saw enormous numbers of downloads initially but usage hasn’t kept up, as bank apps and wallet apps such as Paytm have all incorporated UPI/QR code based payment," said technology expert Prasanto K. Roy. Another app aimed at making e-governance “mobile first" is UMANG (unified mobile application for new-age governance), which provides seamless integration with services such as Aadhaar, DigiLocker and PayGov. Any such new service will now automatically be integrated with the platform.
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Pine Labs opens its payment gateway APIs for developers
Publication- Deccan Chronicle
Edition- Online
Date- 27 May, 2019
Pine Labs, India’s leading merchant platform company, today announced that it has opened its Payment Gateway Application Programming Interface (APIs) for developers. This will enable developers, including those working within merchant organizations to integrate Pine Labs payment gateway APIs with their consumer-facing products or with their existing technology infrastructure such as billing and checkout systems. This move is in line with the company’s commitment to enable the co-creation of innovative fintech products, and thereby empower the merchant community. The Payment Gateway API can accept payments through multiple payment modes including credit/debit cards, netbanking, bank or brand EMI, wallets and UPI. It is a simple and flexible option for internet commerce.
Speaking on the announcement, Vicky Bindra, CEO, Pine Labs said, “We, at Pine Labs, are committed to power our merchants to build successful businesses. We provide omni-channel payment processing solution, enabling 100+ forms of payments. The opening of Payment Gateway APIs is a big step in this direction. We would like to invite developers to integrate our Payment Gateway APIs in the platform or technology stack of their choice. We believe that, together with the developer community, we can build much more valuable technology solutions, powered by our best-in-class payment gateway, for our merchants.”
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