&w=3840&q=100)
B2B fintechs turn to M&As to expand business lines and enter retail market
premium
Ajinkya Kawale Mumbai
Listen to This Article
Mergers and acquisitions are emerging as the next big play for business-to-business (B2B) fintechs, as they look to open new revenue streams and gain a foothold in the retail market.
B2B fintechs are increasingly turning to the consumer side of the payments market, using third-party UPI applications (TPAPs) as entry points.
The move is driven by consumer acquisition cost. Unlike market leaders and challenger apps, which spend heavily on customer acquisition and build scale, B2B fintech players are looking to repurpose their existing base for their TPAP arms.
Consider Zaggle, which last month acquired

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Time of India
an hour ago
- Time of India
Credit on UPI; Amazon rushes into quick commerce
Credit on UPI; Amazon rushes into quick commerce Also in the letter: Banks keen on credit via UPI for small ticket loans Driving the news: How it works: A bank disburses a small-value loan to a credit account linked with a UPI app. The user then pays merchants or shops online using that UPI-linked credit. But why? Also Read: Eyeing leadership quick commerce and other formats: Samir Kumar, Amazon India chief Tell me more: What rivals are doing: Flipkart jumped in with Flipkart Minutes in 2024 and is targeting 800 dark stores by year-end. Blinkit leads with 1,544 dark stores as of June 30. Swiggy Instamart and Zepto each run over 1,000 stores, making competition intense. Also Read: Quote, unquote: By the numbers: Amazon's Prime Day hit 18,000 orders per minute at peak, up 50% year-on-year. Nearly 70% of new Prime signups came from smaller towns, underscoring demand beyond metros. The billion-dollar AI blueprint awaits: Five days to ET Soonicorns Summit 2025 Tell me more: Muted IT hiring with focus on in-demand skills in H2 Driving the news: Lateral hiring will remain selective, while fresh recruitment could hinge on new deal wins. Sharma expects hiring growth of only 3–5% in H2, mainly driven by roles in artificial intelligence, cloud, and platform engineering. Bucking the trend: Hiring targets: TCS: 40,000 40,000 Wipro: 12,000 12,000 Cognizant, Infosys: 15,000–20,000 Also Read: Keeping Count Other Top Stories By Our Reporters Protest against data centre certification scheme in vain: Third tender for IndiaAI Mission GPU cluster: New Artha Venture for top portfolio startups exceeds target: Global Picks We Are Reading Banks are finally looking to disburse loans via UPI, with initial trials in progress. This and more in today's ETtech Morning Dispatch.■ IT hiring in H2■ Data centre certification■ IndiaAI GPU tenderSeveral top banks are planning to extend credit lines via Unified Payments Interface (UPI), targeting users who have never taken a bank loan before, a fintech founder told loans, a recent innovation (less than two years old), come with an interest-free window post-disbursal. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has now cleared the air on key questions, enabling early pilots to take off.'RBI has given clarifications to some banks on how they can run it, and this would be around the likely treatment of the outstanding, interest-free periods, and reporting to the credit bureaus,' another fintech founder familiar with the development credit lines are typically secured against gold, fixed deposits, or offered as unsecured personal or consumer loans. Here's the flow:India has roughly 300 million UPI users, according to industry estimates, with 150–200 million considered active or power users. For banks, offering credit via UPI unlocks a sizable, ready market. For UPI, it may mark the next growth leap, mirroring the RuPay credit card Kumar, country manager, Amazon IndiaDespite being late to India's competitive quick commerce race, Amazon is gunning for the top spot. India country manager Samir Kumar told ET the company is building its 10-minute delivery play , Amazon Now, around customer inputs and sees 'multiple winners' in ecommerce.'Ecommerce is still early, and quick commerce is part of that; it's just faster delivery for us. It's still early days, so it's not like it's late. I believe there will be multiple winners, but at the same time, we are building it based on our customer inputs,' Kumar told said Amazon's recent sales indicate demand was strong among countdown has begun! Five days to India's most definitive congregation of unicorns of tomorrow! The fourth edition of the ET Soonicorns Summit will feature a keynote address by Dr. Sharan Prakash Patil, Minister of Medical Education & Skill Development, Government of Karnataka, outlining the state's vision for an AI-first will also unveil the ET Top Soonicorns and Minicorns of Karnataka | Priority Sectors 2025 report, produced in collaboration with Tracxn, spotlighting emerging hubs in Mysuru, Manipal, and Dharwad beyond report also highlights Karnataka's priority startup sectors—from fintech and digital commerce to EVs, HRTech, and EdTech—showcasing the state's dual strength of broad-based innovation and category-defining the theme 'From Research Labs to Revenue Models: The Billion-Dollar Blueprint for Scaling Indian AI Startups', five power-packed pre-lunch panels will map India's AI playbook—on capital flows, scaling, AI moats, foundation models, and the future of jobs—setting the stage for an unmissable gathering on August 22 in top IT services firms are set to dial down mid- and senior-level hiring in the second half of the year, turning instead to freshers armed with the right skills , as job security jitters linger across the hiring in the April-June quarter across the top five Indian IT firms is likely to continue, unless client spending picks up, said Neeti Sharma, chief executive of mass staffing firm Teamlease not all gloom, however. Demand is expected to stay firm for skills in AI and machine learning, cybersecurity, cloud engineering, and digital consulting. These hires will be targeted, not in bulk, said Aditya Narayan Mishra, chief executive of recruitment firm CIEL the slowdown, IT majors are sticking to their campus commitments for government is likely to proceed with plans for establishing data centre certification guidelines , despite the industry questioning the necessity for India-specific data centre standards and 3,850 GPUs will be added through the third round of the IndiaAI Mission graphics processing units (GPU) tender, according to the project's chief executive, Abhishek Singh. In this round, for the first time, IndiaAI has acquired 1,050 Google Trillium Tensor Processing India Ventures has successfully closed its new Artha Select Fund at Rs 432 crore, with plans to invest in 12–14 startups over the next four years across spacetech, fintech infrastructure, premium consumer goods, and applied AI.■ Startup down rounds are at a 10 year high, according to PitchBook data ( Fortune ■ Did the system update ruin your boyfriend? Love in a time of ChatGPT ( The Guardian ■ Apple finally destroyed Steve Jobs' vision of the iPad. Good ( Wired


Time of India
an hour ago
- Time of India
How to set up auto debit for your SIPs and utility bills: A step-by-step guide
Setting up for mutual fund SIPs For utility bills Auto-debit mandates using UPI Managing instructions Academy Empower your mind, elevate your skills Points to note Always ensure that there is sufficient balance in the bank account before the autodebit date. It is a good idea to set up alerts for transaction tracking. Always cancel or update mandates in advance when switching accounts or services. While registering for a systematic investment plan (SIP), investors can authorise the fund house to debit a fixed amount periodically by submitting a National Automated Clearing House (NACH) mandate. This can be submitted physically or electronically, depending on the fund house. Online platforms and apps linked to bank accounts or UPI offer a quick e-mandate set up an auto-debit facility for utility payments, users can log in to their bank's Internet or mobile banking platform, navigate to the 'Bill Pay' or 'Auto Pay' section, and register their service provider as a biller. Verification is done through OTP authentication . Once it's set up, payments are debited automatically as per the billing have the option to use UPI for auto-debit mandates. While initiating an SIP or bill payment set-up, select UPI as the payment mode and enter the UPI ID. A mandate approval request is sent to the UPI app for authentication. Once approved, the amount is auto-debited on the scheduled date without requiring manual mandates can be tracked, modified, or cancelled via the bank's portal. Banks and financial institutions are mandated by the RBI to send pre-debit notifications to customers 24 hours before executing any recurring transaction. This notification is typically sent via SMS, e-mail, or app on this page is courtesy Centre for Investment Education and Learning (CIEL).Contributions by Girija Gadre, Arti Bhargava and Labdhi Mehta.


Indian Express
3 hours ago
- Indian Express
GST restructure plan: In new regime, online gaming likely to be placed in top bracket
With the Government proposing to overhaul the GST regime with a special rate of 40 per cent on 'sin and demerit goods', the top slab is likely to see the inclusion of pan masala, tobacco, cigarettes, luxury cars, SUVs — and online gaming. According to sources, the Department of Revenue has kept in mind the country's 'social ethos' while tagging goods and services in the 'sin and demerit' category, and online gaming is seen to be fitting that definition. If this move is finalised, it is likely to cause an upheaval among online gaming companies, ranging from fantasy sports and real gaming platforms, which have previously complained of the 28 per cent GST levied on them. The latest consideration also comes amid growing concerns within the Central and state governments over the amount of money being spent on these platforms, and the ease with which these companies enable automatic deductions for payments, sometimes without consent, during consecutive rounds of a game. The 40 per cent rate, which is likely to be recommended by the GST Council, could also benefit the Central and state governments fiscally, with substantial revenue gains expected. The sector has shown fairly inelastic demand previously, when the GST rate was set at 28 per cent from October 1, 2023. Prior to that, many online gaming companies were not paying 28 per cent saying there were differential tax rates for games of skill and games of chance. Official data shows GST revenues jumped sharply after the Council's decision in July 2023 to impose a uniform 28 per cent levy on online gaming, horse racing and casinos with effect from October 1, 2023. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said last September that revenue from online gaming 'increased by 412 per cent and reached Rs 6,909 crore in just six months… from Rs 1,349 crore before the notification issued on online gaming'. For casinos, she had said the revenue increased by 30 per cent, from Rs 164.6 crore in the six months prior to the decision to Rs 214 crore in the same period after the move. The need for a higher GST rate for online gaming may also find support among policymakers as they have been raising concerns over the amount of time being spent by users on these platforms that is resulting in them spending increasingly high amounts of money on such activities. A key consideration behind the move is concerns among policymakers over the time and increasingly higher amounts of money being spent by domestic users on online gaming platforms. The domestic spend on online games is not 'particularly small', Chief Economic Advisor V Anantha Nageswaran had said on August 14, days after the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) for the first time released monthly data breaking up payments made to various categories of merchants via the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). As per the data, UPI payments on digital games averaged more than Rs 10,000 crore in the first four months of 2025-26. '…take a look at how much Indians are spending on online gaming every month. And the number isn't particularly small — it is Rs 10,000 crore per month. That's Rs 1.2 trillion (in a year),' Nageswaran said at a meeting with statistical advisers in various ministries and departments, organised by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. The Indian Express had earlier reported that the Centre is also finalising a move that could bring online real-money gaming companies under the ambit of anti-money laundering laws and subject them to stricter obligations, such as know-your-customer (KYC) requirements, and tracking and reporting suspicious transactions. According to a report by FICCI and EY from March 2025, online gaming companies in India collectively earned a revenue of close to $2.7 billion in 2024. These companies typically make money by taking a cut from a user's winnings. As per the report, more than 155 million Indians engaged with real money gaming sub-segments such as fantasy sports, rummy, poker and other transaction-based games in 2024, marking a 10 per cent increase over 2023. On an average, around 110 million people played these games daily.