India

The rapid development of the Indian mobile wallet market demonstrates the importance of reactivity and adaptability. Huge opportunities await those who can successfully navigate the transformative impact of regulation, emerging technologies and shifting consumer expectations, writes Elina Mattila, executive director of the Mobey Forum.

Ride-hailing and mobile payments company Grab has acquired iKaaz, a Bangalore, India-based payments technology startup, to power its growth in the Southeast Asia region.

India’s income tax officials are investigating transactions at various illegal bitcoin exchanges, a week after the country’s central bank cautioned users of the virtual currency about potential risks.

Almost 10,000 merchants in Hong Kong and Macau will offer discounts throughout December to Alipay users from Mainland China. Merchants in India, Thailand, and other markets will also participate.

Paytm Payments Bank is targeting to become the world’s largest digital bank with 500 million bank accounts and aims to turn into an integrated financial services company that offers everything from wealth management to share trading.

India’s IDFC Bank and local mobile wallet provider MobiKwik are collaborating to provide a virtual prepaid Visa card for nearly 65 million MobiKwik users.

India’s push to build a broad biometrics-based consumer identity database—now 1 billion strong—has been a boon to Paytm and other mobile payments providers leveraging Unified Payments Interface (UPI), the open-architecture structure supported by India’s government.

Apple Inc. is exploring ways to bring Apple Pay to India, according to reports.

Mastercard will invest $750 million in India in the next four to five years by continuing to acquire companies there, CEO Ajay Banga said this week.

In service now for a decade in Africa, India and parts of Europe, M-Pesa is expanding its telco-driven mobile money service to include tap-and-go payments through wristbands, stickers or cards.

Competition between card networks, tech titans Facebook and Google, Chinese fintech proxies Paytm and Hike, and M-Pesa will be fierce, and offer signs how other large emerging payments markets may evolve, writes Eric Grover, a principal at Intrepid Ventures.

An integration with transfer company bux will remove navigation and manual processes for remittances to India.

In India, dLocal wants to enable global e-commerce companies to accept payments from and make payments to India to serve consumers, contractors and supply chains.

Uber India this week announced its integration with Unified Payments Interface (UPI), the mobile payments technology developed by the government-sanctioned National Payments Corporation of India and two local banks, expanding mobile payments access to Uber riders and drivers.

E-commerce cross-border payments provider dLocal has updated its platform in India, enabling global e-merchants to accept and remit payments through all local methods and target the mobile consumer in the country.

Mastercard and Visa have also opened development centers in India, where digital payments are growing quickly.

In the next phase of India’s push to diminish the country’s heavy reliance on cash, the Reserve Bank of India has approved the rollout of a national electronic bill-payment system.

Next month, India Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government will begin amassing a warehouse of virtual information collected not just from traditional sources like banks but also from social media sites, as it looks to match residents’ spending patterns with income declarations, said people familiar with the matter.

At least one winner has emerged from India’s crackdown on so-called black money: the country’s richest banker.

Snapdeal’s co-founders are resisting the latest acquisition bid from rival Flipkart Online Services Pvt. and the company’s board plans to let all shareholders vote on the offer to reach a final resolution, according to people familiar with the matter.