Why Facebook, Reliance Jio deal is a wake-up call for Amazon, Flipkart

Reliance Jio-Facebook deal is an attempt to marry e-commerce with social media, say analysts.

As Facebook, the world’s largest social media company, invests $5.7 billion for a 9.99 per cent stake in Reliance Jio Platforms, the deal is also seen as a powerful alliance to take on formidable players in e-commerce and payments space such as Amazon, Flipkart and Google. The partnership is expected to help Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance’s e-commerce venture JioMart to take on players such as Amazon and Flipkart in the Indian online commerce market, backed by Facebook. According to industry insiders and analysts, the market opportunities for online commerce in the country is expected to touch $200 billion by 2028 from $30 billion in 2018.

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“(Out of the investment made by Facebook) about Rs 15,000 crore would remain with Jio, and this is a huge amount which JioMart can use for building its (e-commerce) network. If they are able to execute this properly on the ground, I think they are going to create massive problems for the likes of Amazon and Flipkart due to the kind of scale that they can achieve,” said Satish Meena, a senior forecast analyst at Forrester Research.

To begin with, Meena said, JioMart is expected to aggressively chase the grocery space, where they can reach a large number of households and work in a way where customers end up buying a lot of services from Reliance itself, related to areas such as mobile connection, television, music and education. “The bigger worry for Amazon and Flipkart now is to reevaluate their business model or logistics as they are not able to fulfil the grocery demand. There is a lot of demand but companies are not ready to deliver.”

RBI removes walls between e-wallets, soon a Paytm user can transact with a MobiKwik user

Inter-operability to help players increase business

 

 

 

economy news: To make the use of digital cash more prevalent and convenient, a digital wallet user would soon be able to accept cash from the user of another Ewallet, because of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) tweaking its guidelines.

 

For example, a Paytm wallet user would soon be able to accept cash from a PhonePe wallet user.

 

Opening up the strings of digital wallets, the RBI on Wednesday said it would issue revised directions by October 11 to allow “inter-operability” among prepaid payment instruments (PPIs). These include digital wallets, prepaid cash coupons and prepaid telephone top-up cards. PPIs are a substitute for paper currency.

 

It is expected that PPIs can inter-operate within six months of the revised directions, the RBI said in its “Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies”.

 

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The RBI said the feedback received was examined and it was decided to rationalise the operational guidelines with a view to encouraging competition and strengthening security of operations, besides improving customer grievance redressal mechanisms.

 

The first guidelines for issuance and operation of PPIs came in April 2009 with the objective to create an ecosysmte. In March, the RBI asked for feedback on the PPI industry. At present, two people using the same digital wallet can do transactions; in less than six months, people using digital wallets from different companies would be able to send and receive money from each other. Read More

Central Bank of India customer wins Rs 1 cr under Modi's cashless scheme

6 winners under the two promotion schemes were given their prizes by President Pranab Mukherjee

#LATEST: A transaction of Rs 1,590 has bagged a Central Bank of India customer a lucky bounty of Rs 1 crore under the Modi government's promotional scheme to popularise digital payments.

President Pranab Mukherjee picked up the lucky winners from the 100th draw of lots under digital payments promotion schemes at Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi.

He congratulated the six winners — three consumers and three merchants — under the Lucky Grahak Yojana and Digi Dhan Vyapar Yojana.

In the consumer section, the first mega prize of Rs 1 crore went to a customer of Central Bank of India, while the second prize of Rs 50 lakh went to a Bank of Baroda customer. A customer of Punjab National Bank is the winner of third prize of Rs 25 lakh.

All the three customers had conducted transactions using their RuPay debit cards. The names of three winners were not yet known as the draw only displayed their transaction numbers. These will be matched with card details to identify the winners.

Three merchants also won prizes of Rs 50 lakh, Rs 25 lakh and Rs 12 lakh, respectively.

The winners will be felicitated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on April 14 at Nagpur on the occasion of Ambedkar Jayanti.

Following demonetisation of old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes on November 9 last year, the government took a slew of measures to promote digital payments in the country.

The government launched the Lucky Grahak Yojana for consumers and Digi Dhan Vyapar Yojana for merchants on December 25, 2016, to promote digital transactions. These schemes are being implemented by the National Payment Corporation of India.

In his address, Mukherjee asked citizens to extend their unstinted support to the mission of a less-cash India.

"India has a long way to go to become a cash less society. The initiatives of the government are a good beginning and we need to sustain and nurture these with active participation from all segments of the society. It is necessary to reduce cash in circulation and impart greater urgency to promoting secure digital payment methods to ensure greater transparency," the President said.

Presently, India remains a primarily cash-based economy with about 95 per cent of the personal consumption and 86 per cent of all transactions being conducted via cash.

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