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India is talking to about eight countries, including those in East Asia, to make UPI payments acceptable, Financial Services Secretary M Nagaraju said on Friday. Unified Payment Interface (UPI) is currently accepted in eight countries -- Bhutan, Singapore, Qatar, Mauritius, Nepal, UAE, Sri Lanka and France. Acceptability of India's digital payment network overseas enables Indian tourists to make UPI payments for transactions abroad. "We are now talking to about 7-8 countries, including many in East Asia, to have UPI transactions," Nagaraju said at a conference on Harnessing AI and digital public infrastructure for Viksit Bharat. Nagaraju also said that India is including a track on UPI in some of the trade negotiations with countries. "Some of the trade negotiations we are doing with some of the countries now, we are trying to have a track on UPI so that the fintech industry which is deeply involved in UPI also have a foot in the financial sector where we have the cost, scale ...
Markets regulator Sebi Chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey on Thursday stressed the need to strengthen investor protection, warning that unregistered advisory groups continue to lure individuals into unsafe trading channels and that dabba trading keeps resurfacing in new digital forms. Addressing a regional investor awareness seminar organised by the BSE in Coimbatore, Pandey said the challenge has intensified in an age where misinformation spreads faster than facts. Fraudulent trading apps look convincing, digital profiles mimic legitimacy, and guaranteed-return schemes promise what no regulated market can offer. Reiterating the seriousness of the threat, he noted that such "unregistered advisory groups lure individuals into unsafe trading channels, and dabba trading continues to reappear in new digital disguises". Such unregistered advisory groups and disguised dabba operations are not isolated incidents, but coordinated attempts to exploit investor trust, curiosity and aspiration. This .
Paytm (One 97 Communications Ltd), India's full-stack merchant payments leader serving MSMEs and enterprises, has launched a fully redesigned version of its flagship app, integrating artificial intelligence-driven features to streamline and personalise everyday transactions for its users. The update introduces a cleaner user interface alongside over 15 new features that seek to make payments faster and smarter for customers across the country, including Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) in 12 countries. One of the standout innovations is the launch of "Gold Coins," a first-of-its-kind initiative that rewards users with digital gold on every payment, adding a valuable savings dimension to regular transactions. The revamped app is built around AI, allowing it to understand spending patterns, automatically organise transactions, and provide personalised insights. Features such as the reimagined balance history with AI tags help users quickly gauge their total balance across UPI-linked bank
Digital payment transactions accounted for 99.7 per cent in terms of volume and 97.5 per cent in value in the payments system during calendar year 2024, and the trend continued in the first half of 2025, according to a Reserve Bank report released on Thursday. The payments ecosystem in India has witnessed remarkable growth in recent years, said the RBI's half-yearly Payment System Report, June 2025. The payments landscape in India consists of a bouquet of payment systems designed to cater to the diverse needs of users, which include paper-based instruments (cheques) as well as digital payment systems. Digital payment systems include NEFT, IMPS, RTGS, NACH, debit and credit cards, prepaid payment instruments, and UPI. The report also showed an increasing trend across all categories, except for paper-based instruments. Cheques account for 2.3 per cent of the total transactions in terms of value. In terms of volume, the payment transactions grew from 3,248 crore in CY 2019 to 20,849