Latest news with #UnifiedPaymentsInterface
Time of India
8 hours ago
- Business
- Time of India
Paytm shares hit Rs 1,000-mark on business recovery, revenue growth
After taking a sustained hammering on the bourses in the wake of its regulatory challenges, Paytm parent One 97 Communications ' shares have bounced stock has rallied 117% in the past 12 months, compared to a 1.9% rise in the Sensex. It is trading close to its 52-week high of Rs 1,063 per share, seen in mid-December company's shares touched the Rs 1,000-mark for the first time in six months on Wednesday, during a five-day rally. The stock cooled off in Thursday's session amid selling counter opened at Rs 1,005.25 apiece on the BSE today, against the previous close of Rs 1,004.50 per share. The stock closed at Rs 999, down 0.55%, against a 0.45% decline in the benchmark Sensex. Paytm has been recovering after being hit by regulatory actions last year. The company got approval from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) last October to restart onboarding Unified Payments Interface (UPI) customers after an eight-month ban. The licence came after the Reserve Bank of India advised the UPI operator to review Paytm's request to become a third-party application provider (TPAP) and diversify app providers to reduce concentration then, the digital payments platform has been working to add UPI customers through its partner banks: Yes Bank HDFC Bank and State Bank of India The company is also gradually improving its business metrics, led by healthy momentum in the merchant business, according to brokerage Motilal Oswal. Meanwhile, disbursement volumes and gross merchandise value (GMV) are also growing at a steady of customer onboarding, a stable number of monthly transacting users (MTUs), and continued recovery in the financial services business are likely to drive healthy growth in revenues for Paytm, analysts at Motilal Oswal parent saw its consolidated net loss slightly narrow to Rs 540 crore in the three months ended March 2025, from a Rs 550 crore loss in the same quarter last year. The company had stated that its bottom line, without exceptional losses, is at a breakeven point. For the March quarter, Paytm recorded exceptional losses of Rs 522 crore, including a one-time Esop cost of Rs 492 crore Paytm's Esop cost is expected to drop to Rs 75 crore in the June quarter, from Rs 169 crore in the March quarter. The company said it achieved an operational profit of Rs 81 crore, after excluding Esop costs, in the March revenue declined 16% year-on-year to Rs 1,912 crore in Q4FY25 from Rs 2,267 crore a year ago. The company is scheduled to post its financial results for the June quarter on July has expressed strong confidence in its merchant loan distribution business, where it assists with both distribution and company has now begun providing a Default Loss Guarantee (DLG) for select portfolios with specific lenders. This move, according to Paytm, will help expand its merchant base and enhance its financial services revenue in the long factoring in the cost of DLG, Paytm's contribution margin (excluding UPI incentives) has grown to 54%, on improved payment processing margins and rising high-margin financial services income. The company expects these margin trends to continue. Contribution margin refers to the revenue left with a payments platform after deducting variable costs for processing the transactions.
The Hindu
17 hours ago
- Business
- The Hindu
From Coins to QR Codes: How UPI Changed Everyday Transactions
Published : Jul 17, 2025 08:13 IST - 10 MINS READ I can't remember when exactly I started using the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), but it has been a while. I think it was pre-COVID—I had to make a payment to a friend and he suggested I download GPay. I was hesitant and wary at first, as we tend to be with new things, especially when it involves one's bank account, not that there is very much in it, but still. When I sent my first email in 1998, little did I know that it would mark the end of writing letters. Often the dramatic turning points in our lives are not marked in red. We might remember birthdays and death anniversaries, but technological changes have a way of slipping into our lives quietly, like a neighbourhood cat that one day likes you enough to adopt you. From here on, your life will never be the same, except that you don't know it yet. I must have posted one last letter to someone but it's not something recorded in my memory. I wrote a letter, then email entered my life, and I moved forward. Similarly, one innocuous afternoon a skinny lad came and affixed a cable to my parents' Bush Baron black & white TV. I stopped watching Doordarshan and switched to watching The Wonder Years and MTV. I think it was 1994. I never went back to DD. Another instance I can think of is dictionaries. For quick reference we started using online dictionaries, especially while writing; I can't recall the last time I checked a word in the Concise Oxford. I mention this because once in March and twice in April, the National Payments Corporation of India, the body that is responsible for the smooth functioning of UPI, experienced 'intermittent technical issues'. It was a bit like the 'Sorry for the Interruption' sign on DD, except that that sign was a frequent fixture on our screen in the 1980s—we were used to it; the UPI is so reliable that we transitioned seamlessly and take it for granted. Money has ceased to be a tactile thing. Also Read | Digital India must not deny the unlettered access to their own money Everywhere I went—to the supermarket, the kirana store, the cigarette shop—people were desperately trying to make payments but were unable to. The new bar of soap was abandoned, left to fend for itself on the shop counter. That's how dependent we've become on UPI. The UPI being down was a national issue; it trended on X and broadsheets ran editorials. The wallet-keys-watch holy trinity—something we always double checked when leaving home—has long ceased to be holy. Most of us have stopped using cash; carrying a debit card is a hassle, for the debit card needs a wallet, and the wallet's place in one's pocket has been usurped by the phone. ****** UPI is the world's most popular alternative payment method, way ahead of others like Skrill (100+countries), Brazil's Pix and China's Alipay. One of the reasons why UPI became so popular in India is because cash transactions were never easy-peasy. One started the day with a challenge: how will I break a note. If the note was of a high denomination, one was forced to buy things one didn't really need, just to make the process of breaking a note more attractive for the shopkeeper. Change was hoarded like gold. There was another problem: if you were not careful, your fellow Indian would try and palm off a tattered note. Like if the streetlight was not working at the spot where the auto guy dropped you off at night, he might slip in a torn note, or one that was taped together. You couldn't afford to let your guard down because everybody was looking to get rid of their dodgy notes. The law says that all notes, no matter what the condition, are legal tender. That's not the way it worked on the ground. Funny, how a poor country can be so concerned about the aesthetics of currency—how a note looks decides its fate, a bit like how brides are chosen in arranged marriages. One also had to be alert about counting the notes—the payee would give you less money than was actually due. If you caught him out, he'd pass it off as a mistake. My first time in England, I made the mistake of counting the money that the cabbie had returned to me. I did this in front of him, which, I was later told, was a very rude thing to do. He was offended. There, the levels of trust are so high that counting is taken as an insult—are you trying to say that I'd cheat you? Where do you come from? A tradition that was passed down from generation to generation was to hold the note up to light to check for the watermark. We did it out of reflexive habit and no one took offence. Fake currency was a thing, and doing this just showed that you were a thoroughbred Indian insider. It got you streetcred. The act/ process of obtaining the cash was tedious in itself. One had to fill out a withdrawal form or a self-cheque, stand in a queue, before being granted an audience with the cashier, a dreaded, grumpy, frog-like figure with zero princely potential. He would squint at you from behind the counter and nine times out of ten declare that the signature did not match. He would make you do another signature, then scrutinise it like a watchmaker. I always got the sense that the cashier behaved like he owned all the money in the bank; he was not giving you what was rightfully yours, but doing you a favour. In recent times, the cashier's high point came during demonetisation, except that by now he worked in an air-conditioned private bank and had access to a note-counting machine. The skill of licking your finger before counting notes had been made redundant. 'Nowadays, cash is used by two categories of people: the really poor who have no access to a basic smartphone and a bank account, and the really wealthy who still hide their black money in basements and false ceilings. ' Cash came with another problem—of storing it in the house, and how to carry it safely while travelling. A stock of emergency cash would generally be hidden under a pile of clothes in the Godrej almirah. It was an open secret known to burglars. When travelling long-distance, my father would wear a vest with an inside pocket where the notes were concealed, a kind of secret portable locker, fused into one's body. Nowadays, cash is used by two categories of people: the really poor who have no access to a basic smartphone and a bank account, and the really wealthy who still hide their black money in basements and false ceilings. Cash enjoys an under-the-table existence in most property deals, which are conducted partly in white and partly in black. In bars and clubs, you can still find rich brats pulling crisp bills from wads of cash. Daddy must be a real estate dealer. Which brings us to the handmaiden of currency notes: coins. The memories of coinage are like the rings on a spliced tree trunk: you can tell a person's age from the coins she remembers. Coins are made of metal and alloys, each with its own fascinating history. The 10 paisa coin, for instance, went through a gamut of materials—cupronickel (1957-67), nickel-brass (1968-1971), aluminium (1971-1993) and stainless steel (1988-1998). The metal factor spawned its own artificial man-made scarcity. If the value of metal was more than the coin's denomination, those coins would illegally vanish from the market. They were melted down and sold as what they were originally: base metal. The beautiful thing about coins is that people collect coins and they have value. The current value of a discontinued coin is at times more than its original denomination, depending on age and rarity (those from before 1980 are more valuable); mint mark (coins from the Bombay and Calcutta mints are more sought after); and condition (whether worn or uncirculated). Commemorative coins with special designs, issued to mark specific events, can be worth a lot more. Or take the 25 paisa coin of 1984. The coin was minted in Bombay, Calcutta and Hyderabad, but in this case the Hyderabad one is the most valuable, going at a rate of Rs. 1,000-5,000, while the Bombay and Calcutta ones are valued at Rs.50 and Rs.100. A range of numismatic apps, from Coinbazzar to even Flipkart, cater to the coin collector. I still find old coins in my house, in unopened drawers, unspent leftovers from childhood piggybanks made of clay—the great Indian gullak. Coins also enjoyed a parallel life. Passengers on a train would fling coins into rivers for good luck. Most coins didn't make the journey to the riverbed, landing on the railway overbridge itself. Children from nearby shanties would collect the coins and put them back into circulation. ****** When MTV launched in 1981, the first ever music video they played was The Buggles' 'Video Killed the Radio Star'. The coming of the ATM killed the cashier, punctured his pomposity. No longer was he a star sitting on a high horse in a stifling cubicle, with a slow-whir fan for company. The first ATM I used was when I arrived as a student at Oxford, in 1998. I was petrified of the machine, took too long to press the right buttons, and, sure enough, the machine swallowed up my card. It was night and the bank was shut. I pictured it going down a mysterious chute, before vanishing into an underground molten black hole. When I went back the next morning the recovery process turned out to be quite simple. An employee opened a lock from inside the bank, put his hand in and fished it out. He demystified the ATM. The ATM made life easier, both for us and the thieves. The bank robber didn't now require the skill or gumption to break into a bank safe after dinner or do a daring hold-up after breakfast. He just had to detach the ATM machine, bung it in a getaway vehicle and drive away into the sunset. Which is why, at least in India, ATMs come with security guards. For the guard, the ATM kiosk is his office and bedroom. The more ambitious use it as a library to work in, a cramped study room of sorts, where you can read, make notes, and prepare for competitive exams. Also Read | What broke Paytm? To be fair, UPI has not killed cash, coins, cashiers or the ATM. The RBI continues to issue coins in the denominations of 50 paise, 1, 2, 5, 10 and 20 rupees. But, at least for the urban middle class, actual currency has become a bit like linear TV—it's not dead, yet, but on its way out. Most have switched to smart televisions. While UPI has not killed cash off completely, it has killed the toffee economy. Back in the day, the shopkeeper would return some amount of the balance due to the customer in toffees. The reason given was the lack of requisite change. A small bakery near my house expanded into a full-blown eating joint by following the five-toffee principle. This unwritten rule states that in every transaction return a minimum of five rupees (sometimes even 10) in toffees. This led to many arguments with tempers soaring, before the hapless customer surrendered in resignation. The second rule was that toffee was a one-way currency—the shopkeeper was allowed to use it as such but not the customer. You couldn't come back the next day, buy a loaf of bread and pay part of the amount in toffee. I must say that I sort of miss those orange Parle toffees that could fill several jars, even though I was somewhat pleased to hear that the bakery recently burned down due to a short circuit. It will take many, many toffees to rebuild it. Meanwhile, start searching for that lost 5 paisa coin in your house. It might just make you a millionaire. The writer is the author of The Butterfly Generation: A Personal Journey into the Passions and Follies of India's Technicolour Youth, and the editor of House Spirit: Drinking in India.
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Business Standard
a day ago
- Business
- Business Standard
UPI-PayNow: Step-by-step guide to instant India-Singapore remittances
The Unified Payments Interface (UPI)-PayNow linkage has been expanded, enabling faster and more convenient cross-border money transfers between India and Singapore. Announced by NPCI International Payments Limited (NIPL), a wholly-owned subsidiary of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) on July 16, this service now covers 19 Indian banks, simplifying remittances for millions, particularly the Indian diaspora in Singapore. Here's a simple guide on how to use the service. How to send money from India to Singapore? Sending funds abroad no longer requires lengthy bank codes or waiting days for settlement. With UPI-PayNow, transfers are completed in seconds. -Log in to your banking app: Use a participating bank's net or mobile banking platform, such as HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, or State Bank of India. -Navigate to foreign remittance: Locate the 'Foreign Outward Remittance' section and accept the terms (a one-time process). -Enter beneficiary details: Provide the recipient's Singapore mobile number or Virtual Payment Address (VPA), e.g. +65XXXXXXXX#XXXX. -Confirm and send: Review the transaction summary, check the exchange rate, and authorise payment. The funds are credited in real-time. Participating banks for outward transfers include Canara Bank, Karur Vysya Bank, and Indian Overseas Bank, among others. In Singapore, customers of DBS SG and Liquid Group can avail this service. How to receive money in India from Singapore? Receiving funds is just as straightforward. The sender in Singapore initiates the transfer using PayNow, while you provide your UPI ID. What you need to do: -Register your UPI ID: Ensure it's linked to an account with one of the 19 participating banks, including Axis Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, or Punjab National Bank. -Share your UPI ID: Give this to the sender in Singapore. -Receive funds: The money appears in your bank account instantly via UPI-enabled apps like PhonePe, Google Pay, or your bank's app. Key details to keep in mind -Transaction limits: Up to Rs 60,000 per day from India; SGD 1,000 per day from Singapore. -Availability: Operates 24x7, 365 days a year. -Security: Backed by strong encryption and safety protocols. Ritesh Shukla, managing director & chief executive officer of NIPL, says, 'This expansion strengthens cross-border payments infrastructure and offers seamless access for users in both countries.' Why it matters According to the official statement, this service reduces costs and delays often associated with traditional bank wires. It's particularly useful for migrant workers, students, and families making small, frequent transfers. As India remains the world's largest recipient of remittances, according to the RBI remittance survey 2025 $118.7 billion inflows in 2023-24, initiatives like UPI-PayNow deepen financial connectivity and support economic growth.
Mint
2 days ago
- Business
- Mint
New UPI guidelines related to pre-sanctioned credit lines to come into force from Aug 31 onwards
If you are a frequent user of UPI, it is recommended to stay abreast of the changes made in the digital payment ecosystem. NPCI, which runs UPI, issued a circular dated July 10 introducing some new guidelines with regards to pre-sanctioned credit lines. Before that, let us first understand some background. In September 2023, NPCI issued a circular allowing the pre-sanctioned credit lines to be enabled on UPI (Unified Payments Interface). Earlier only savings accounts, overdraft accounts, prepaid wallets and Rupay credit cards could be linked. But later, the scope of UPI was broadened to include credit lines as a funding account as well. Under that facility, payments made through a pre-sanctioned credit line issued by a scheduled commercial bank to individuals with prior consent of the individual customer are enabled for transactions using the UPI system. Now the latest circular dated July 10, 2025 has incorporated more changes to the earlier facility. The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) said in the circular that the customer experience to be made consistent across interest bearing credit lines and end use of such pre-sanctioned credit lines being linked to UPI will be aligned with the purpose for which loan was granted. I. Issuers will stipulate terms and conditions of use of such credit lines. The issuer will also ensure compliance of use of such credit lines. The issuer will also ensure compliance with extant regulatory guidelines, Bank policy, legal requirements, and the defined purpose of such interest bearing credit line offering. II. Issuer will approve or decline transactions initiated via UPI as per extant regulatory guidelines, and defined purpose of the credit. III. All UPI member banks, sub members, PSPs (payment service providers) and the third party app providers will enable additional MCCs for transactions through interest bearing account types. The circular signed by Kunal Kalawatia, chief of products, NPCI, reads that all UPI member banks, sub members, PSPs, credit line issuers and third party app providers are instructed to implement these changes before Aug 31, 2025. For all personal finance updates, visit here
Time of India
2 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
'No UPI, only cash in Bengaluru': Why small vendors in Indian IT capital are saying no to online transactions
Small vendors say UPI payments have drawn GST attention Vendors fear harassment and eviction Live Events GST department says notices are based on data Political concerns and economic pressure Other states may follow Bengaluru's model Revenue targets add urgency (You can now subscribe to our (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel Once a stronghold of digital payments, Bengaluru is now witnessing a growing shift back to cash transactions. Small shopkeepers and street vendors across the city are removing QR codes and replacing them with hand-written signs that read 'No UPI, only cash.' The switch is being driven by concerns over tax notices and regulatory vendors who previously preferred Unified Payments Interface (UPI) for convenience now say digital transactions have brought them under the lens of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) department.'I do a business of about Rs 3,000 a day and live on the small profit I make. I can't accept payment by UPI anymore,' said Shankar, a shopkeeper in chartered accountants, and vendors told The Economic Times that thousands of unregistered businesses in Bengaluru—including roadside food stalls, push carts, and corner stores—have received GST notices. Some notices include tax demands running into lakhs of Vinay K Sreenivasa, joint secretary of the Federation of Bengaluru Street Vendors Associations, said many vendors fear being harassed by GST officials. Some are also worried about possible eviction by civic bodies, which has led them to stop accepting UPI current GST rules, businesses involved in supplying goods must register and pay GST if their annual turnover exceeds ₹40 lakh. For service providers, the limit is ₹20 commercial taxes department stated that it has issued notices only in cases where UPI transaction data since 2021-22 showed turnover above the GST threshold. The department said such businesses are required to register, disclose taxable turnover, and pay the applicable HD Arun Kumar, former additional commissioner of commercial taxes in Karnataka, noted that the tax authorities must provide evidence before issuing a tax demand. 'Under the GST laws, the burden of proof is on officers. They must establish it before arriving at a tax demand, unlike in money laundering cases,' he MLA S Suresh Kumar said he plans to write to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah to raise the issue and seek his intervention.A former GST field official noted that digital credits do not always reflect business income. 'Some of it would be informal loans or transfers from family and friends,' the official accountant Sreenivasan Ramakrishnan of Sreeni & Associates said Bengaluru may be just the beginning. 'Bengaluru may emerge as a test case. If the GST authorities can net a good chunk of revenue by tapping unregistered vendors, other states too will take the cue as every state is desperate for funds,' he said. 'Officials have zeroed in on chat vendors with high business in Mumbai. It's only a matter of time considering the huge potential tax base,' he tax officials are working under pressure to meet a collection target of ₹1.20 lakh crore for 2025-26. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah is also facing demands to finance welfare guarantees worth ₹52,000 crore and respond to pressure from Congress MLAs seeking funds for infrastructure projects
