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The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear on July 20 the Centre's plea against a Delhi High Court verdict setting aside the tender awarded to private firms for outsourcing Consular, Passport and Visa (CPV) services at Indian missions in Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Singapore and Canberra. A bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana was urged by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta that the high court's decision has made rendering of visa and other services at these places difficult. The CJI agreed to hear the plea on Monday. While setting aside the tender awarded to private firms for outsourcing CPV services, the high court had directed the Centre to issue a fresh Request for Proposals (RFP), inviting fresh bids. The solicitor general said that fresh tenders were awarded following the procedure, but no new entity can start functioning straightaway, and as a result, such services have almost become dysfunctional. In its verdict, the high court said that w
Digital payment authentication must move beyond passwords and one-time passwords (OTPs) as artificial intelligence-driven commerce gathers pace, a top Visa official said on Thursday. "Authentication cannot remain dependent on passwords or one-time codes designed for an earlier digital era. It must become secured by design, invisible to the consumer, and resilient against increasingly sophisticated fraud," Suresh Sethi, group country manager for India and South Asia of Visa, said at a company event. The global payments major launched its 'Payment Passkey' solution in India on Thursday. The company said VPP enables consumers to authenticate online card payments using capabilities already built into their mobile devices, including fingerprint, facial recognition, device PIN or pattern, instead of relying solely on OTPs. This helps satisfy the two-factor authentication requirement applicable in India. Sethi said the solution is built on globally accepted FIDO standards and is designed
Payments giant Visa said Wednesday that it has embedded its payment network inside of ChatGPT, empowering the chatbot to independently shop and complete transactions on behalf of its user. It means AI agents can not only recommend products but complete the purchase on the user's behalf, at potentially any merchant that accepts Visa. The payment network's previous attempts at this technological leap were confined to a single retailer or a small set of enrolled merchants. It is not OpenAI's first attempt at e-commerce. The company late last year announced Instant Checkout, which allowed ChatGPT to scour the internet for a specific item like a digital personal shopper. But the process was prone to errors and was not widely adopted by merchants due to the fee that OpenAI was charging merchants. The company retired Instant Checkout in March. Visa's collaboration is different from OpenAI's previous attempts, as it will allow users to link their Visa cards to ChatGPT to shop and make it ..
Indian nationals will no longer need a transit visa when travelling to another country with a layover at a German airport, the country's embassy said here on Tuesday. The decision will come into effect on June 3, 2026. Every year, a large number of Indians, including students, professionals and tourists, travel through German airports, on way to other destinations. "Indian nationals will no longer need a transit visa when travelling to another country with a layover at a German airport. The lifting of the so-called airport transit visa requirement for Indian citizens was announced in the Federal Law Gazette on June 2, 2026, and takes effect on June 3, 2026," the German embassy said in a statement. "It underlines the Federal Government's commitment to deepening German-Indian relations, facilitating the movement of people, and further strengthening economic ties," it said. This comes as a result of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz's visit to India in January, the embassy said. In
Visa, a payment gateway provider, on Monday announced that Suresh Sethi has been appointed Group Country Manager for India and South Asia. In this role, Sethi will lead Visa's strategy and operations across India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Maldives and Bhutan, the company said in a statement. He succeeds Sandeep Ghosh, who is leaving Visa for other opportunities. Based in Mumbai, Sethi will report to Stephen Karpin, Regional President, Asia Pacific, Visa, it said. Most recently, Sethi served as MD and CEO of Protean e-Gov Technologies Ltd, where he led its transformation into an agile, product-led Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) institution, it added.