Report: Indian Banks Prepare New Payments Apps
India’s fledgling mobile payments system, the Unified Payments Interface, has a head of steam behind it: An Aug. 30 story in Mashable said that some two dozen banks in the country are set to release UPI apps via Google Play in the coming days.
Those financial institutions include CICI Bank, Canara Bank and Andhra Bank. A report from earlier this year contends that UPI threatens to make such mobile wallet services as SBI’s Buddy, ICICI Bank’s Pockets, HDFC Bank’s Chillr and Paytm “redundant.” UPI, backed by the Reserve Bank of India and other financial institutions, is designed to reduce the cash economy in a country where, according to the World Bank, only 53 percent of people have bank accounts. UPI enables payments via smartphones and a two-factor authentication process.
In related news about mobile payments in Asia, an Aug. 30 story in the Nikkei Asia Review said that of the approximately $1.39 trillion in mobile payments in China last year, Alipay accounted for 72.9 percentof that amount, with WeChat Pay in second place with 17.4 percent. But WeChat is expanding its share, accounting for 38.3 percent in the first quarter of 2016, with Alipay accounting for 51.8 percent. Apple Pay and Samsung Pay have both recently launched in China but it was unclear how much mobile wallet market share they have captured so far.
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