India

Before Paytm became one of India's most popular mobile wallets, it was a little-known bill payment app that launched in 2011 and spread by word of mouth. Now Paytm is revisiting that history in Canada, though its challenges in North America are very different than what it faced in India.

Global policymakers are all over the map when it comes to regulating cryptocurrencies. But industry participants are eager to have some direction — and soon.

One of India’s biggest cryptocurrency trading platforms has lost about 438 Bitcoins worth some 190 million rupees ($3 million), allegedly due to a rogue employee.

India’s Unified Payment Interface is a model that other developing economies can emulate, as they look to move away from cash-centricity and overhaul their own payments infrastructure in pursuit of speed, security, auditability and financial inclusion, writes Anoop Villait, managing director of corporate development at Transpay.

In deploying the Social Pay money transfer service, ICICI Bank says it is the first bank in India to allow nonresidents to send money to family and friends in the country for special occasions like festivals and birthdays.

With 1.3 billion people who are mostly unbanked in an economy where 85% to 95% of all transactions are still conducted in cash, few other markets have such an opportunity to modernize payments.

Just 16 months after demonetization forever changed the way Indians pay for things, WhatsApp is set to disrupt the market yet again.

In India, tens of millions of merchants still operate largely in cash with a mostly unbanked rural population. Technology could solve their problems, but the bigger differentiator may be in how payment services are sold.

Indian online shopping site Paytm Mall is opening a New Delhi store, taking a page out of backer Alibaba’s playbook in exploring ways to use physical retail to boost its online business.

The South Asian nation’s income tax officials had started investigations into transactions at various illegal bitcoin exchanges in December, soon after the country’s central bank cautioned users about potential risks.