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All You Need to Know About PM Narendra Modi’s BHIM-Aadhaar Pay App

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had launched the BHIM-Aadhaar Pay app a few days back, which is a biometric-based payment system allowing you to make payments with the help of thumb impressions. It has been developed by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the Aadhaar-linked Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM) mobile app is based on the Unified Payment Interface (UPI). This app for Android and iOS users have been introduced to encourage the use of digital payments.

USPs of BHIM app

BHIM provides a smartphone front-end to make bank-to-bank payments. The USP of this app lies in its simplicity, it is light, occupying only 2 MB space. It has an uncluttered and simple user-interface, and the transaction experience is fast.

In contrary to the perception of many payment apps, most users consider transactions on this app to be safe due to government backing. With its great user experience (UX) aspect and UPI’s low transaction cost (currently there’s no cost for both payers and payees), the app genuinely competes with cash on both convenience and price.

Who can use the app?

The app will be applicable only for retail merchants (individuals and sole proprietors) and not for corporate merchants.

The app will be available for download to merchants across the country, which will link your Aadhaar number and biometic fingerprint to complete a transaction.

How to use the app?

To enable the transactions through BHIM-Aadhar, merchants will need to purchase fingerprint scanners.

They would just need to download the Aadhar Pay App and connect their smartphones to the biometric scan machine to accept the payments from customers. The merchants would also be required to connect their bank accounts and register themselves on the app.

If you want to make payment, you would need to enter your Aadhar Number in the app and select the bank from which the payment is to be made and use the biometric scan as the password for the transaction.

Upon entering the Aadhar Number, the app would automatically fetch the bank accounts linked with your Aadhar number, then you can make the selection of bank for payment as per your choice.

How will the app be useful?

The app is expected to end people’s dependence on credit or debit cards and reduce cash transactions. Moreover, it is expected to make digital payments simpler for people who cannot read or write.

Moreover, the app would not charge Merchant Discount Rate (MDR). MDR is the charge paid by the merchants to a bank for accepting digital transactions through credit or debit cards.

The Aadhar Pay App for merchants will help eliminate the long waiting period and hassle of getting a new POS (Point of Sale) machine. It also doesn’t need you to remember passwords, account numbers or set up payment addresses and use USSD codes to transfer money.

Customers don't need to have a smartphone or any other technology to make payments. No service tax or any other extra charge on the payments using Aadhaar payments app will be levied. There is no need to carry debit card or credit card too.

[thetechjockey-blog]

Why Mobile Wallets are Worried with the RBI Norms?

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) issued guidelines for prepaid payment instrument (PPI) licence holders in March. Mobile wallet companies expressed their concerns to RBI officials over the proposed guidelines for the sector, in their formal feedback to the regulator on them. One of the issues included the know your customer (KYC) norms. 

The Payment Council of India and the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) had arranged a meeting in which they gave out feedback on the proposed norms. Some clarifications were sought on certain clauses in the meeting, while the companies discussed issues around KYC as the norms could be an overkill for small transactions.

As per the KYC norms, companies will have to convert existing wallets without complete KYC to full KYC compliant wallets within a period of 60 days from the date of issue. If they fail to do so, no further credit will be allowed into these wallets. Currently, e-wallets and other such prepaid payment instruments can only hold up to Rs 20,000 per user with minimum KYC.

The main request given by the companies in their feedback to the RBI was that minimum KYC be retained or the deadline for implementing full KYC be extended to 18-24 months. The reason being that telecom companies would have done Aadhar linking of mobile numbers, which will be useful to mobile wallets to do full KYC for all their clients. They also said that KYC norms will increase customer acquisition costs for them and a simple process will get complicated. The other request to RBI was to publish the interoperability guidelines for wallets.

Other norms in which they objected include:

Assurance of a separate login provided for the the PPI account by mobile wallet companies, ensuring that access to PPI is not made part of access to other services offered by the issuer or its associate/parent/group company etc.

Requirement to have a minimum net worth of Rs 25 crore, as compared to the existing minimum of Rs 1 crore.

Necessary agreement requirement of wallet services with the e-commerce platforms and payment gateways rather than individual merchants. The companies will have to submit the list of merchants it hosts to the bank and timely update it.

PPIs are currently seeing monthly transactions of Rs 6,000 crore, of which about Rs 4,000 crore is from money transfers while corporate solutions such as smart cards for expense management constitute about Rs 500 crore, as per people with knowledge of the matter. E-commerce giant Amazon recently received a wallet licence from RBI.

[thetechjockey-blog]

15 Promising Start-ups to Look out for

Startups in India are popular and a part of the mainstream. India stands third when it comes to startups. It has emerged as the fastest growing base of startup worldwide. But to decide whether a startup has been successful or not, many factors are to be considered like whether it is innovative or is it functioning in a hot sector where others are focusing too? Has it raised fund quickly? We have compiled a list of 15 of the hottest Indian startups. Check it out below:

Bolt

Bolt Red Streak is the world’s first smart cellphone charger for motorbikes. It has been advertised as a 2A mobile charger for a motorbike, which attaches itself to the handlebars of the bike. It also has a unique detachable design to prevent theft and misuse of the device. Through Bolt Riders app it automatically tracks the entire ride on a route map, total distance, average speed etc.

CapitalFloat

It is a digitally financial platform for SMEs. It offers flexible, short-term loans to purchase inventory, service new orders or optimize cash cycles. The company is headquartered in Bengaluru and was started in 2013. It has come up with an innovative product such as ‘Pay Later’ which gives loans to retailers against PoS machines. Capital Float is the trade name of Zen Lefin Pvt. Ltd., a non-banking finance company (NBFC) registered with the RBI. 

CloudCherry

CloudCherry is a real-time, omni-channel SaaS (Software as a Service) based customer experience management platform that helps companies track, measure and enhance customer experience and delight resulting in increased customer loyalty and profitability.

Droom

Droom is India's first and largest online marketplace to buy and sell used cars, bikes, scooters, bicycles, and even planes. It provides a platform to buy or sell anything with wheels, as well as all related services such as car care and detailing, auto inspection, warranty, road side assistance, and insurance to list a few. 

EduKart

EduKart assists a student right from the time he or she decides to pursue a course till the time the enrollment is completed. It is a platform that helps the students to enroll in a degree, diploma, certificate, entrance coaching and school education courses, thus catering to the entire education life cycle of an individual. 

Faircent

Faircent is a peer-to-peer landing platform, catering to retail and business loans, founded in 2014. It helps customers get cheaper loans based on their creditworthiness and assists lenders in earning high returns from their peers or community.

Fareye

FarEye was founded in September 2014 and is a leading platform for field service and workforce management software with powerful scheduling solutions. It helps enterprises to streamline their logistics operations. This SaaS-based mobility platform encourages real time co-ordination between field jobs, mobile workers and on-demand consumer requests.

Flyrobe

Flyrobe is a designer apparel rental startup in function since September 2015. It is an online fashion store for you when you wish to rent clothes for special occasions. It provides with the best of international brands and designer wear for both men and women at cheap rates when you need to dress up.

FreshMenu

FreshMenu is a one-stop-shop to order food online, which delivers food within 45 minutes. It cooks and delivers food from its own kitchens in Bengaluru, Mumbai, New Delhi and Gurugram. The food is freshly prepared by FreshMenu’s in-house chefs with no minimum order and no delivery charges.

HealthifyMe

HealthifyMe is a Bangalore-based startup which raised $7 million in funding in 2016. It is a mobile app developed by a team of doctors, nutritionists, and fitness trainers helping users achieve their fitness and weight loss goals. The app syncs to all leading wearables allowing users to track their activity and calories, and share this data with fitness coaches. 

Inshorts

Inshorts provides curated news stories of the day in 60 words across 10 news categories including politics, business, sports etc. and has over more than half a billion page views every month. It allows reading news in Hindi as well as English. Inshorts has summarized stories that contain only headlines and facts, no opinions, to help readers stay informed of the current affairs.

Mad Street Den

Mad Street Den is a Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence startup whose visual intelligence platform helps businesses to reimagine the future with AI. The company's first vertical, Vue.ai, was one of the world's first AI solutions for retail, specifically reimagining the future of fashion.

Mihup

Mihup a Bangalore-based startup, offers a chat-based artificial intelligence enabled personal digital assistant that supports in finding out information on travel, shopping, sports, news, entertainment, etc.

Uniphore

Uniphore, a Chennai-based technology startup, allows any software application to understand and respond to natural human speech. Their solutions for voice biometrics, virtual speech assistant and speech analytics aim to change the way enterprises engage their consumers and build loyalty.

Zenatix

Zenatix is an energy data analytics company that provides energy management and analytics solutions, helping its clients save 10-30% on its electricity spend and make them energy efficient. It is a both hardware and software company. The hardware includes sensors which connect to Zenatix controller, which is used for both data acquisition and automated control of electrical loads.