Post the demonetisation announcement in November last year, India saw the popularity of its mobile payment service sector increasing by many folds. And now, data from the Reserve Bank Of India (RBI) has proved that demonisation indeed ended up spurring the growth of digital companies in India. According to RBI, digital payment companies like Paytm, MobiKwik, FreeCharge clocked PPI payments worth a whopping Rs 13 billion in value across 59 million transactions in November 2016.
While the Indian subcontinent seems to be getting really warmed up to the idea of digital payments, the industry is still reeling with challenges such as innovation, standard, and interoperability. Recently, at the FinTechX conference by Internet and Mobile Association of India, several industry experts discussed the need for the role of regulator to change from a supervisor to partner in learning. According to Smita Aggarwal, director of investments at Omidyar Network, with innovation growing at a such a phenomenal pace, there is an urgent need for companies adopt learning in approach and the regulator should partner in the learning process. Naveen Surya, MD of ItzCash and Chairman of Payments Council of India, added to Aggarwal's line of thought and said, the parity between digital and cash is important as otherwise the growth of digital transactions is a story that would soon be forgotten. Hence, the Intent of the regulator should remain the same i.e, to digitise and encourage cashless transactions.
Vivek Srivastav, SVP of research and innovation at ReBit also shared similar views and said that in order to better the performing of the digital payments industry, there's a need to incentivise digital payments and disincentivise cash transactions. It has been observed that mobile wallets in India have been putting a lot of water in the dough to make it work but heavy promotional costs are driving down their profit margins. Srivastav also highlighted that fintech companies in India have not been fully utilising the scope of financial services such as insurance, lending, mutual funds, pension funds. Adding to this, Vikram Singh, partner at BTG legal said, “Regulations should be proportionate. Standardised regulation in terms of networth cannot serve all companies same. Regulator must look at what the company wants to do."
Speaking at the conference, Saurabh Garg, joint secretary at the department of economic affairs, ministry of finance discussed about how fintech companies can function as a tool for financial inclusion in the Indian subcontinent by exploring opportunities such as making digital transactions a part of credit score and P2P (peer-to-peer) lending.
In a study done earlier this year by CouponDunia, a famous coupons site, it was revealed that digital wallets like PayTM, freecharge, followed by online cab players like Ola and Uber were among the top performing categories for cashless transactions post-demonetisation. Apart from digital wallets and online cabs, grocery ordering and food ordering platforms have also become more popular and witnessed a surge in traffic ever since 500 and 1000 notes stopped being legal tenders, said the report furnished by the cashback platform. According to the report, PayTM, Freecharge, Mobikwik, Dominos Pizza and Yatra were the top performing brands post the demonetisation announcement.
While the Indian subcontinent seems to be getting really warmed up to the idea of digital payments, the industry is still reeling with challenges such as innovation, standard, and interoperability. Recently, at the FinTechX conference by Internet and Mobile Association of India, several industry experts discussed the need for the role of regulator to change from a supervisor to partner in learning. According to Smita Aggarwal, director of investments at Omidyar Network, with innovation growing at a such a phenomenal pace, there is an urgent need for companies adopt learning in approach and the regulator should partner in the learning process. Naveen Surya, MD of ItzCash and Chairman of Payments Council of India, added to Aggarwal's line of thought and said, the parity between digital and cash is important as otherwise the growth of digital transactions is a story that would soon be forgotten. Hence, the Intent of the regulator should remain the same i.e, to digitise and encourage cashless transactions.
Vivek Srivastav, SVP of research and innovation at ReBit also shared similar views and said that in order to better the performing of the digital payments industry, there's a need to incentivise digital payments and disincentivise cash transactions. It has been observed that mobile wallets in India have been putting a lot of water in the dough to make it work but heavy promotional costs are driving down their profit margins. Srivastav also highlighted that fintech companies in India have not been fully utilising the scope of financial services such as insurance, lending, mutual funds, pension funds. Adding to this, Vikram Singh, partner at BTG legal said, “Regulations should be proportionate. Standardised regulation in terms of networth cannot serve all companies same. Regulator must look at what the company wants to do."
Speaking at the conference, Saurabh Garg, joint secretary at the department of economic affairs, ministry of finance discussed about how fintech companies can function as a tool for financial inclusion in the Indian subcontinent by exploring opportunities such as making digital transactions a part of credit score and P2P (peer-to-peer) lending.
In a study done earlier this year by CouponDunia, a famous coupons site, it was revealed that digital wallets like PayTM, freecharge, followed by online cab players like Ola and Uber were among the top performing categories for cashless transactions post-demonetisation. Apart from digital wallets and online cabs, grocery ordering and food ordering platforms have also become more popular and witnessed a surge in traffic ever since 500 and 1000 notes stopped being legal tenders, said the report furnished by the cashback platform. According to the report, PayTM, Freecharge, Mobikwik, Dominos Pizza and Yatra were the top performing brands post the demonetisation announcement.
Advertisements