Digital Financial News

TikTok, Amazon, Instagram, Snapchat and other major tech companies operating in Europe are confronting an extensive effort to clean up online content, AP reported. The first phase of the European Union’s new new digital regulations, known as the Digital Services Act (DSA), is set to become effective from this Friday, August25. The DSA, a part of a suite of tech-focused rules developed by the 27-nation bloc, aims to enhance online user safety and prevent the spread of illegal or harmful content, including content violating platform terms of service, such as promotion of genocide or anorexia.

Operating in a ring-fenced environment and involving a digital currency that is a real claim on the Reserve Bank, 14 pilot projects with a range of industry participants investigated potential CBDC use cases. The various use cases explored in the project highlighted a range of areas where tokenised money could add value, reports the RBA, including by facilitating programmable payments, atomic settlement in tokenised asset markets and offline payments. The project also highlighted opportunities for CBDC to support the development of new forms of privately-issued digital money, including tokenised bank deposits or CBDC-backed stablecoins. "In this sense, a CBDC could be viewed as an enabling complement to, rather than substitute for, private sector innovation," notes the central bank. However, the project highlighted the need for further analysis of the legal underpinnings for a CBDC, as well as consideration of the regulatory frameworks that could apply to any new business models that may arise.

Infosys has planned to roll out 80% variable pay on an average for its employees for the quarter-ended June. It will be disbursed along with this month's salary. «We delivered a good performance in Q1, setting a robust foundation for future expansion. We remained committed to helping businesses accelerate their digital journeys and catering to emerging client requirements.

Narendra Modi on 23 August is scheduled to hold a bilateral meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on the Day 2 of the 15th BRICS Summit. Then later in the day, the prime minister is also scheduled to attend open and closed plenary sessions in Johannesburg. The plenaries will be followed by a cultural performance and a banquet dinner hosted by President Cyril Ramaphosa.

The Russian banks MTS and PSB have begun testing the digital ruble, with “entrepreneurs” using the CBDC to pay for “services.”

Chandrayaan-3, is poised to achieve a historic milestone by making a first successful landing on the southern polar region of the Moon. Amidst this anticipation, Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) scientists at Space Applications Centre (Isro-SAC) and the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) reflect on how the landing site was choosen for Chandrayaan-3. The best landing site of Chandrayaan-3 was meticulously pikced through an exhaustive analysis of diverse datasets gathered from prior lunar missions, including Chandrayaan-1, Chandrayaan-2, Selene, and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission led by the US. The parameters for selection included a thorough assessment of the lunar topography, slope characteristics, illumination patterns, and potential hazards.

top Indian IT companies. Despite the challenges, there are some undervalued IT stocks worth considering. These stocks are currently trading below their historical averages.

Entain, the operator of the Ladbrokes and Neds brands, has axed more than 50 local jobs as it attempts to adapt to lower discretionary spending.

Worley boss Chris Ashton has singled out artificial intelligence as a top priority, setting up a new working group to investigate how it can incorporate the emerging technology into its global engineering business.

Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd, the retail business of Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd, is looking to raise Rs3,048 crore through an infrastructure investment trust (InvIT) of its warehousing and logistics infrastructure assets, shows a draft document filed with Sebi. ET first reported on 12 April that Reliance was planning to monetise the warehousing and logistics assets of its retail business through an InvIT and that the group had set up a trust under the name of Intelligent Supply Chain Infrastructure Trust for this purpose. Reliance Retail will hold a minimum of 25% units of the trust and balance will be sold to incoming investors. Of the total issue proceeds of Rs3,048 crore, around Rs100 crore will be used for acquiring equity shares of a special purpose vehicle (SPV) created to hold the warehousing assets, while a sum of Rs2,928 crore will be used to provide a loan to the SPV for acquisition of the warehousing and related logistics assets. The initial proposal is to acquire warehouse space of 12.77 million square feet and related logistics infrastructure for a consideration of Rs4,261 crore. Additionally, the trust has also entered into a lending agreement with Sikka Ports and Terminals Ltd, a Reliance group entity, to avail a rupee term loan of Rs2,122 crore, which will also be utilised towards acquisition of the warehousing assets. The portfolio of assets will comprise 64 warehouses spread across 34 cities across India including key warehousing markets such as Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Pune and Hyderabad.

The Reserve Bank’s market trials of an eAUD – as its proposed central bank digital currency is known – rightly focused on applications that could deliver the biggest efficiency gains to the Australian economy.

unemployment rate, RPG Group Chairman Harsh Goenka has highlighted another key issue that is affecting his business. He believes that while people are complaining about unemployment, his company is facing a shortage of 'skilled' workers. According to Goenka's post on the X platform (formerly known as Twitter), "We want construction workers- we can’t find enough! We want truck drivers- huge shortage! We want plantation workers- they are not available! Can’t understand solution".

On August 9, 2023, Maple Finance announced the opening of its Cash Management Solution to U.S. domiciled Accredited Investors and Entities, operating with a Reg D exemption. This development allows these investors to access a conservative yield backed by U.S. Treasury bills on-chain.

Education Policy (NEP 2020), the authorities said as reported by ANI. -As per the authorities, this AI School facility will be initially available to students from classes 8 to 12.

₹2,410 a quintal from Tuesday as prices of the kitchen staple continued to rise. “The measure is being taken to ensure the interest of both farmers as well as consumers," Union Minister of Consumer Affairs and Food Piyush Goyal said. The government on Sunday decided to increase the onion buffer to 500,000 tonnes from the initial procurement target of 300,000 tonnes for the current year.

The Reserve Bank of Australia says a central bank digital currency could increase “efficiency and resilience in some areas of the payments system”, but warns more research is required to deal with legal, regulatory, technical and operational issues to ensure any eAUD operates safely.

Meta's Facebook or Instagram and Google’s YouTube Kids will be able to directly fetch and verify documents of teenagers’ parents from DigiLocker and use it to avail parental consent, people aware of the matter, told ET. The Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023, defines children as those below 18 years, which is above the global threshold. Users above 13 years of age are allowed on many social media platforms. For users in India between 13 and 18 years of age to access any platform or avail services on the internet, apps may now have to get parental consent by verifying the identity of the children and their parents. If the parent agrees to share the data with the social media platform, she will have to enter a one-time password to provide consent.

Bharat Billpay is preparing to enter into person to person (P2P)-based transactions, expanding into a completely new sector beyond its core bill payments business. After the Reserve Bank of India said in December last year that Bharat Billpay can expand into new payment modes across both recurring and non recurring payments, the newly-formed company wants to go after both government payments and P2P transactions. “We intend to enable all kinds of collection payments, and become the defacto collections platform across use cases. With BBPS it does not matter whether one uses a credit card or UPI or a debit card or even cash to make a transaction — we are truly mode agnostic,” said Noopur Chaturvedi, chief executive officer of NPCI Bharat Billpay. Chaturvedi joined Bharat Billpay in August 2021.

Global Capability Centers (GCC), or captive technology facilities of large global lenders and MNCs, such as Citi, Deutsche Bank and T-Systems, are strengthening their Indian presence in their 2.0 avatar after having partially scaled down operations in the country around 10-15 years ago. The global captives had sold a part or even their entire operations to Indian IT companies, mostly during the global financial crisis, to focus on core operations instead. But they now see India as a crucial profit and value-addition centre, helping their global headquarters in finance, supply chain, research and development (R&D) operations, building digital and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. Deutsche Bank, which sold their captive to HCLTech in 2004, said its GCC has already onboarded over 2,500 hires so far this year and expects the trend to continue in the similar range for the rest of the year.

As the cryptocurrency market remains dynamic, the focus shifts once again to Bitcoin's price movement. 

Through successful fundraising, acquisitions and a marketing campaign to lure financial advisors put off by the pending Charles Schwab-TD Ameritrade mega-merger, Altruist has established itself as a significant player on the asset custody market with ambitions to grow even larger.