SBI leads mobile banking chart with over 38% market share

The bank, quoting the Reserve Bank data for December 2015, today said in December 2015, SBI accounted for 38.44 per cent of total mobile banking transactions in terms of volume and 35.97 per cent market share in terms of value.

State Bank of India , the nation's largest lender, is also the leader in digital banking in the country in both volume and value terms, handling over 38 per cent mobile banking transactions a month.

The bank, quoting the Reserve Bank data for December 2015, today said in December 2015, SBI accounted for 38.44 per cent of total mobile banking transactions in terms of volume and 35.97 per cent market share in terms of value. SBI leads the mobile banking space with 151.83 lakh transactions worth Rs 17,636 crore in December 2015.

As against this, the closest rivals, who are all private sector lenders, pale. ICICI Bank   , the second largest lender, had just about 70.01 lakh transactions, followed by Axis Bank with 60.28 lakh and HDFC Bank   with a low 39.13 lakh, in volume terms.

Commenting on the achievement, SBI chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya said in terms of mobile banking volume, the bank has been consistently maintaining leadership position since April 2015. "Till a few months back, our customers were doing mostly low to medium value fund transfers and m-commerce transactions on mobile. But with the launch of our dedicated user-friendly mobile apps for non-retail customers, the average transaction size has shot up more than five times," she said. In May 2015, SBI launched mobile banking variant StateBankAnywhere-Saral which is meant for small and medium firms with single authorised signatory/user. Another variant StateBankAnywhere- Corporate for large corporate customers was launched in October 2015. These apps have been receiving significant response from on-the-move corporate customers and are facilitating a large number of high-value transactions through their mobiles. State Bank has a mobile app for each segment covering a wide range of customer needs. The app 'State Bank App Kart' gives its users a seamless user interface for installing, opening or upgrading mobile applications of the State Bank Group. Its another platform is SMS Banking with the app called SBI Quick that facilitates inquiry related options for everyone even from basic phones. Then the bank also has a mobile wallet 'State Bank Buddy' with a user base of around 2.5 million.

Flipkart introduces India’s first ‘No Cost EMI’ payment option on big ticket products

Flipkart announced on May 31^st that it has partnered with Bajaj Finserv to provide ‘No Cost EMI’s’ to buyers on their online shopping portal. The alliance will allow Flipkart to push big ticket products to untapped audiences.

The availability of small sized personal loans is fragmented and its process is cumbersome; not to mention the processing fees and hidden costs associated with the loan. Less the 1% of the Indian population has access to a credit card, which makes purchasing power for high priced products low.

Flipkart’s new alliance with Bajaj Finserv will offer attractive financing options where a buyer would pay back in EMIs and bear no additional costs. Loan tenure begins with 3 months and goes up to 12 months when purchasing with Flipkart online.

The scheme has been rolled out across select brands and products, which Flipkart plans to build on. The company additionally announced that the ‘Low Cost EMI’ option is one of many other services they plan on introducing through the course of the year.

Flipkart’s Senior Director and Head of Digital & Consumer Financial Services, Mayank Jain, mentions that the new ‘No Cost EMI’ service has the potential to disrupt online shopping just like when they first introduced the option to pay with ‘Cash on Delivery’ (COD).

Flipkart has looked to solve fundamental issues in the e-commerce industry and this alliance providing financial aid to buyers will increase the purchasing power of customers manifold, and let Flipkart increase sales. Along with the company’s other offerings like product exchange and assured buy back, the online shopping portal is bound to garner customer loyalty in a market where the customers’ purchase decisions are governed by price and not necessarily by the quality of service.

Flipkart is India’s largest marketplace with a customer base of over 75 million that are served by over 85,000 vendors. The online shopping portal enjoys a 60% market share in smartphone sales with a total inventory of around 40 million products across 80 categories.

Purchase from Flipkart using following link:

http://bit.ly/2eYyX7r

Flipkart introduces India’s first ‘No Cost EMI’ payment option on big ticket products

Flipkart announced on May 31^st that it has partnered with Bajaj Finserv to provide ‘No Cost EMI’s’ to buyers on their online shopping portal. The alliance will allow Flipkart to push big ticket products to untapped audiences.

The availability of small sized personal loans is fragmented and its process is cumbersome; not to mention the processing fees and hidden costs associated with the loan. Less the 1% of the Indian population has access to a credit card, which makes purchasing power for high priced products low.

Flipkart’s new alliance with Bajaj Finserv will offer attractive financing options where a buyer would pay back in EMIs and bear no additional costs. Loan tenure begins with 3 months and goes up to 12 months when purchasing with Flipkart online.

The scheme has been rolled out across select brands and products, which Flipkart plans to build on. The company additionally announced that the ‘Low Cost EMI’ option is one of many other services they plan on introducing through the course of the year.

Flipkart’s Senior Director and Head of Digital & Consumer Financial Services, Mayank Jain, mentions that the new ‘No Cost EMI’ service has the potential to disrupt online shopping just like when they first introduced the option to pay with ‘Cash on Delivery’ (COD).

Flipkart has looked to solve fundamental issues in the e-commerce industry and this alliance providing financial aid to buyers will increase the purchasing power of customers manifold, and let Flipkart increase sales. Along with the company’s other offerings like product exchange and assured buy back, the online shopping portal is bound to garner customer loyalty in a market where the customers’ purchase decisions are governed by price and not necessarily by the quality of service.

Flipkart is India’s largest marketplace with a customer base of over 75 million that are served by over 85,000 vendors. The online shopping portal enjoys a 60% market share in smartphone sales with a total inventory of around 40 million products across 80 categories.

Purchase from Flipkart using following link:

http://bit.ly/2eYyX7r

Flipkart introduces India’s first ‘No Cost EMI’ payment option on big ticket products

Flipkart announced on May 31^st that it has partnered with Bajaj Finserv to provide ‘No Cost EMI’s’ to buyers on their online shopping portal. The alliance will allow Flipkart to push big ticket products to untapped audiences.

The availability of small sized personal loans is fragmented and its process is cumbersome; not to mention the processing fees and hidden costs associated with the loan. Less the 1% of the Indian population has access to a credit card, which makes purchasing power for high priced products low.

Flipkart’s new alliance with Bajaj Finserv will offer attractive financing options where a buyer would pay back in EMIs and bear no additional costs. Loan tenure begins with 3 months and goes up to 12 months when purchasing with Flipkart online.

The scheme has been rolled out across select brands and products, which Flipkart plans to build on. The company additionally announced that the ‘Low Cost EMI’ option is one of many other services they plan on introducing through the course of the year.

Flipkart’s Senior Director and Head of Digital & Consumer Financial Services, Mayank Jain, mentions that the new ‘No Cost EMI’ service has the potential to disrupt online shopping just like when they first introduced the option to pay with ‘Cash on Delivery’ (COD).

Flipkart has looked to solve fundamental issues in the e-commerce industry and this alliance providing financial aid to buyers will increase the purchasing power of customers manifold, and let Flipkart increase sales. Along with the company’s other offerings like product exchange and assured buy back, the online shopping portal is bound to garner customer loyalty in a market where the customers’ purchase decisions are governed by price and not necessarily by the quality of service.

Flipkart is India’s largest marketplace with a customer base of over 75 million that are served by over 85,000 vendors. The online shopping portal enjoys a 60% market share in smartphone sales with a total inventory of around 40 million products across 80 categories.

Purchase from Flipkart using following link:

http://bit.ly/2eYyX7r

Plastic is fantastic: Credit cards register highest growth in five years

Credit card issuances have recorded an impressive growth of 16 per cent year on year to 24.5 million in the financial year ended March 31, 2016 as banks added 3.4 million cards to the system. This was the highest growth in the number of cards added by banks after Reserve Bank of India (RBI) began sharing the data in 2012. Card spends too registered a 26.7-per cent growth in FY16.

HDFC Bank, the second -largest private sector bank in the country, stayed at the top of the heap with 7.28 million cards, or a 22-per cent growth over the previous year, data released by the RBI showed.

However, it is Axis Bank, the third-largest private sector lender in the country, which upped the ante in 2015-16. The bank saw a 39 per cent growth in its card base to 2.41 million, while spend on cards grew by 46 per cent.

Sangram Singh, head, cards and merchant acquiring, Axis Bank, said: “We have two or three things we focus on. One is our customer base. We have 1.6 crore (16 million) savings bank customers. The second is we are not limited to the metro cities. Nearly half of our growth comes from cities other than the top metro cities.”

While Axis Bank focuses mainly on its existing customers to increase its card base, it also offers cards to non-customers on a selective basis, mainly to customers of its credit card partners such as Lufthansa and Air Vistara.

“We are adding about one lakh cards every month. We expect to grow faster than the industry,” Mr. Singh said, adding the bank aims to grow 40 per cent in card number in the current financial year.

This growth has moved Axis to fourth position in term of number of cards, toppling foreign lender Citibank.

While Axis Bank added more cards than HDFC Bank, the latter’s card base is equal to the combined card base of the second and third-largest card issuers, ICICI Bank and SBI Cards. The latter is the credit card arm of the State Bank of India, the country’s largest lender.

SBI Cards, which grew by 16 per cent in numbers and by 26 per cent by value, has narrowed the gap with ICICI Bank, which grew by about 10 per cent in FY16.

Vijay Jasuja, CEO, SBI Cards, said: “We have tied up with five banks, and that helped. These banks don’t have their own credit card, so they offer SBI cards to their customers and earn a fee.”

He added, “Last year, we had tied up with two private sector banks, Federal Bank and Lakshmi Vilas Bank, which has helped card penetration. We also have exclusive tie-ups with IRCTC and Big Bazaar.”

Foreign lenders Citibank and Standard Chartered, which are among the top five card issuers, saw a decline in the number of outstanding cards, indicating domestic players are getting the market share being vacated by foreign lenders.

Mr. Singh said, “The top four card issuers are domestic players with large savings bank franchises.”

Credit card issuances hit a record high in 2007-08 when numbers touched 27 million, bankers said. However, following the global financial crisis in 2008, bad loans from unsecured loans mounted and banks became cautious. As a result, the number of cards fell to 18 million in 2009-10. Banks started pushing credit cards again from 2012-13 as they were better prepared to price risk as credit history of individuals became available.

Apply for credit card: http://bit.ly/2eYFQFQ

Three charts show how mobile wallets are exploding in India (but plastic cards are still ahead)

When was the last time you stood in a queue to pay your phone bill or book an airline ticket? Chances are you paid for it online or on your phone. As high-speed mobile internet services become easier to access in urban centres and even Tier 2 cities, leather wallets may be going out of fashion – and they are being replaced by mobile wallets.

While online banking and even mobile banking has been around for a long time, mobile wallets – which hold your money digitially – have made it easier. If you have ever taken an Uber ride you know how this works: you load money on a digital wallet through your bank account and then use that stored cash to digitally pay for a myriad of services.

To understand just how big mobile wallets are becoming, consider this – Paytm,the market leader in this space, reaches just 40% of the smartphone users in India. Yet those users have deposited more than Rs 100 crore to their Paytm mobile wallets. There are over 40 mobile wallet services active in the country, with almost every bank also planning one of their own to take market share away from the likes of industry leaders Paytm and Freecharge.

This means companies are going to aggressively go after users over the next few years, giving many more options to the consumer. To achieve growth, mobile wallet companies are going offline by integrating digital services with payment-on-site terminals at grocery shops, fuel stations and even inside autorickshaws so that the users do not have to take out their wallets and look for loose currency.

Payt has even launched TV advertisements to promote its m-wallet.

However, a big threat could come from the government of India. With its soon-to-be-launched Unified Payments Interface that will integrate multiple bank accounts and cards into one, the government is keen to provide a seamless experience for making online payments. Mobile wallets are not yet part of the UPI system, according to reports.

UPI’s rollout could be another factor impacting a mobile wallet ecosystem that has already undergone huge changes in the last few years.

Data published by the Reserve Bank of India tells a story of a massive boom in both adoption and usage of mobile wallet as a mode of payment.

Over the past four years, mobile wallet transactions have jumped from Rs 10 billion of transactions in 2012-'13 to more than Rs 490 billion in the year 2015-'16. Taxi app Uber’s adoption of Paytm went some way in popularising mobile wallets among those who weren’t before using the services, and even pushed its competitor Ola to build a wallet of its own.

But it’s not just the value of transactions that is overwhelming, it’s the rate at which mobile wallets are being adopted by users. Scroll crunched the numbers put out by RBI and it turns out that the value of transactions carried out through mobile wallets have grown by a humongous 500% between 2014-'16. Meanwhile, the number of transactions carried out through m-wallets have doubled in the same time period.

By comparison, the number of debit and credit cards transactions grew by 25%-50% in the same period. On the other hand, the value of transactions done through plastic money grew by a modest 25%.

However, that is not to say that mobile wallets are going to make your debit card redundant any time soon. Even though electronic transactions make up for only about 10% of all the transactions in this cash-dominated economy, plastic money has the lion’s share of it.

For instance, debit cards saw more than 117 crore transactions during the last financial year and credit cards added another 78 crore transactions in the same period. As compared, mobile wallets managed a healthy 60 crore transactions but that’s considering the fact that many users actually use their debit/credit cards to put funds into their digital wallets.

Six setbacks to Uber’s expansion in India

For Uber Inc., the world’s most valuable start-up, India is a market it cannot afford to lose, especially considering Didi Kuaidi’s dominance in China. A significant part of its latest fundraising of $3.5 billion last week from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which values the company at $68 billion, is expected to be deployed to bolster its business in India, where it compete with Didi Kuaidi-backed Ola (ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd). While Uber has managed to increase its market share in India from a paltry 5% around January last year to about 30-35% currently, the journey has been anything but smooth, given that the company found itself on the wrong side of the law on multiple occasions. Here is a look at those hiccups:

1. RBI’s two-factor authentication rule for credit card payments

Uber’s proposition of a seamless ride depended to a great extent on cashless payments. Uber used to store a passenger’s credit card details, and money used to be automatically deducted from the account after the completion of a ride. However, the payment method soon became unlawful after the Reserve Bank of India made two-factor authentication mandatory for even “card not present transactions”. The central bank had given all stakeholders time till 31 October (year) to comply with the regulations and later extended the deadline by one more month. Consequently, Uber announced a partnership with mobile wallet provider Paytm to comply with the law.

However, the company reintroduced credit card payments in July 2015, after the RBI relaxed two-factor authentication for transactions up to Rs.2,000. The company also launched cash payments in India in July last year, a move which industry executives say helped it narrow the gap with Ola.

2. The Delhi rape case

On 7 December, 2014, a woman in Delhi alleged that she was raped by a cab driver affiliated to Uber, an incident which changed the discourse for ride hailing services in the country. The Delhi government was quick to ban Uber from operating in the city. While Uber maintained that it merely provided a technology platform that connects drivers and consumers, the government said ride hailing services should take responsibility for the safety and security of passengers, leaving the door ajar on such issues. This kicked off a tussle between the likes of Ola and Uber and various state governments, which wanted them to register as taxi operators.

In October, India’s ministry of road transport issued guidelines for ride hailing services, identifying them as on-demand information technology-based transportation aggregators and not taxi companies, although it is up to the states to accept or reject this.

3. Surge pricing crackdown

Uber pioneered surge pricing in the taxi segment. Surge pricing allows Uber to raise fares in an area when demand is higher than supply. The company contends that surge pricing helps in increasing the number of drivers on road when demand peaks.

However, the company came under fire from the governments of Delhi and Karnataka, two of their biggest markets, for surge pricing. The Karnataka government, which fixed an upper limit for the fare charged by ride hailing services in the Karnataka On-demand Transportation Technology Aggregators Rule, 2016, continues to impound cabs affiliated to Ola and Uber. The Delhi government also threatened to crack down on Ola and Uber if surge pricing continues. To be sure, both Ola and Uber have temporarily stopped surge pricing in Delhi and Bangalore following the crackdown.

4. Licence for operations

Last month, the Karnataka transport department said that the government has implemented the Karnataka On-demand Transportation Technology Aggregator Rules 2016, which requires businesses to hold an effective licence.

A statement issued by the commissioner of transport’s office stated that taxi aggregators who are yet to obtain relevant licences should immediately stop operations, a move which could hold up the operations of Ola and Uber.

Uber said the company has applied for the licence. Uber has also filed a separate petition with the Karnataka high court on Wednesday, objecting to certain clauses in the Karnataka On-demand Transportation Technology Aggregators Rule, 2016.

5. Bike taxis

In Karnataka, the transport department had cracked down on bike taxi services offered by Uber and Ola. Both companies have since withdrawn bike taxi services, which was launched in March.

6. Supreme Court’s verdict on diesel taxis

Before the Delhi government threatened a crackdown on surge pricing, Uber and rival Ola had faced another roadblock in Delhi in December last year, when the Supreme Court barred the registration of diesel vehicles with engines bigger than 2,000cc in Delhi-NCR until 31 March. The move could have impacted the ride hailing services as conversion to compressed natural gas could have been capital intensive. However, in a relief to the companies, the Supreme Court last month allowed diesel cabs running on all India tourist permits to ply in the national capital region (NCR) until the expiry of these permits.

AmEx expects growth spurt from T-2 markets as it expands footprint

As rising incomes change consumption patterns and a new breed of affluent class is dominating demand, world payments systems giant American Express is gung-ho about India, especially tier II cities.

According Manoj Adlakha, CEO, American Express Banking Corporation, India , many of the cities where Amex has witnessed growth are tier 2 cities like Hyderabad, Pune, Surat, Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Indore, Coimbatore, Jaipur and Chandigarh.

Taking its cue, the world’s largest credit card firm is focusing on these markets and is banking on the next growth spurt to come from them. “We have seen significant growth on our new card acquisition and billings from cities like Hyderabad, Kolkata, Pune, and Coimbatore,” said Adlakha to Express.

The card issuer is currently present in 14 cities in the country, with Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Chennai being its traditional key markets. It has also been expanding geographically to look at markets like Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara, Indore, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Pune, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Coimbatore.

According to RBI data, American Express card members spend on an average five times more than non-AmEx cardholders. AmEx’s plans for India gain significance as the Indian market is undergoing an evolution. According to KPMG-FICCI’s 2015 report, India is expected to become the world’s fifth largest consumer market by 2030 with a five-fold projected rise in absolute consumer spending. Additionally, exponential growth in the e-commerce space has prompted a surge in digital payments.

This provides the firm with ample opportunities to increase penetration online as well as offline. Today India is the fastest-growing online payments market for American Express.

“We want to be where are customers are. We have the largest integrated global payments platform. We bring together users, card members, and merchants, and the data is incredibly valuable. We know where they spend online and offline. We want to deliver benefits and services when our card members want it, where, and how they want it,” Adlakha pointed out.

“We already have good coverage in the South. About 85 per cent of our card member needs are met by our wide merchant network. Having said that, we are working towards further expanding our coverage and acceptance net. In Bengaluru all the major fine dining restaurants, leading retailers, supermarkets and hypermarkets are part of our network,” he added.

At the end of March, 2016, AmEx had issued 837,960 cards. According to data from the RBI, credit card transactions at

POS (points of sale) in March 2016 saw transactions worth about Rs 2,797.06 crore, with the number of transactions a little less than 3.3 million.