Heena Sharma Blog

  The government has finally allowed Facebook to start operating its WhatsApp payments service in the world's biggest open technology market, that's India.Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg today announced that no fee will be charged for sending money via WhatsApp as the company rolled out its payments services in India. In 2018, WhatsApp had started testing its UPI-based payments service in India, which allows users to utilise the messaging platform to send and receive money.The testing was limited to about a million users as it waited for regulatory approvals to come in.On Thursday, NPCI allowed WhatsApp to start its payments service in the country in a "graded" manner, starting with a maximum registered user base of 20 million in UPI. Read More

The US Federal Reserve, or the Fed, should replicate India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) model for its proposed interbank real-time gross settlement (RTGS) service, Google has recommended. Launched in 2016, the UPI is the country’s flagship real-time payments system, which allows users to transfer money directly from their bank accounts. Since it works across multiple bank accounts, without revealing the details of one’s account to the other party, it makes paying someone as simple as handing over cash. It clocked 1.2 billion transactions in November, valued at Rs 1.89 trillion. Citing the UPI’s phenomenal success in India, Google, in a letter to the Fed, said FedNow should be an open system, like the UPI. “ We’ve been pretty vocal that we believe the right model for driving digital payments is through partnership between banks, governments and tech companies through open and standard-based infrastructures like UPI,” tweeted Caesar Sengupta, general manager & vice-pr...

Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi on March 19 launched its first Android Oreo Go edition-based Redmi Go smartphone. Priced at Rs 4,499, the entry-level budget smartphone will go on sale from March 22 through Flipkart, Mi stores and Mi online store. Aimed at first time smartphone users, the phone comes bundled with a cashback offer worth Rs 2,200 from Reliance Jio. Along with the Redmi Go, the company introduced its Unified Payment Interface-based digital payment app, Mi Pay . Xiaomi Redmi Go features and specification The phone is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 system-on-chip (SoC), paired with 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage -- expandable up to 128GB through microSD card. The phone boots Android Oreo Go, an operating system designed for entry-level smartphones with limited hardware resources. The OS comes preloaded with Google Android Go app suite, which includes a YouTube, Chrome, Google, Google Assistant, Files, Google Maps, and Gmail. It also supports lite apps fro...

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has permitted authorised card payment networks to offer card tokenisation services to any third party requesting it. Tokenisation acts as an additional layer of security as it masks sensitive card data such as the 16-digit account number, expiration date and security code. It creates a set of numbers that is used to substitute your card information. This ensures that your card information is not disclosed to the website or merchant you are transacting with. "Services such as the Visa Token Service can help prevent fraud by offering financial institutions, merchants, and third party payment providers, such as digital wallet providers, a secure way to enable mobile and online payments without sharing sensitive account information," said T R Ramachandran, Group Country Manager, India & South Asia, VISA. Tokens can be device-specific, retailer-specific or even use case-specific. It is a service offered by leading card networks all a...

It is an oft-repeated, well known story, only the actors keep changing. For more than a year, Facebook-owned instant messaging giant WhatsApp has been looking to foray into India’s thriving digital payments industry but has moved little beyond a beta launch. Now, it is the $1-trillion US tech giant Apple that cannot find it in itself to launch a proprietary payments product using the country’s flagship Unified Payments Interface (UPI), suggest reports. Apple’s move to shelve its UPI plan comes at a time when Google has placed massive bets on the Indian payments ecosystem, especially with its Google Tez app, recently rebranded to Google Pay, which allows people to pay, collect and request payments using UPI. However, Google isn’t too sure of its own future, either. The company is known to be assessing its plans in India, considering strict data localisation norms. If the UPI values are rising at a breakneck speed each month – they have eclipsed credit card spends in th...