Digital Financial News

ACC, Ambuja Cement and Dalmia Bharat declined on Wednesday after foreign brokerage firm UBS assumed coverage of India’s cement sector with a negative outlook. Going against the consensus view, UBS has this contrarian negative outlook of cement stocks on the back of rising competition and expensive valuations.

leadership role at UBS. The reshuffling of positions is a result of the ongoing aftermath of the Swiss authorities' intervention to rescue Credit Suisse through a shotgun merger with UBS, leading to new management taking charge. Jacques de Vaucleroy, a Belgian executive who previously held management positions at French insurer AXA and Dutch bank ING, has been serving as the acting chairman since Ermotti stepped down in April.

The Chinese central bank has unveiled an offline SIM card-based digital yuan “hard” wallet solution that lets users pay with the central bank digital currency (CBDC) with powered-down phones.

SoftBank is considering a U.S. listing for its PayPay payments business, three sources familiar with the matter said, in what could mark another American listing for Masayoshi Son's sprawling tech conglomerate along with chip designer Arm. New York is seen as a more attractive destination than Tokyo given the higher valuations tech companies generally achieve, one of the sources said.

While the adoption of digital payment modes has brought a lot of convenience, they have also made us vulnerable to fraudsters who are coming up with new ways to cheat unsuspecting customers by gaining access to their main bank accounts and wiping off large amounts of money. This is because you use your main account to make every kind of transaction and end up exposing large sums of money to fraudsters.

Nazara Technologies tumbled over 14% while those of Delta Corp hit the 10% lower circuit in Wednesday's trade after the GST Council, headed by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, gave the nod to levy 28% GST on online gaming, horse racing and casinos at full value at the 50th meeting of the GST Council held in Delhi. In a major setback to the country's online gaming industry, the GST Council on Tuesday decided to levy a 28% tax on the full value of monies paid by users. Moreover, GST on online gaming will be imposed without any differentiation of whether it's based on skill or chance.

e-rupee payments goal, the Reserve Bank is seeking to drive daily CBDC transactions to 10 lakh from up to 10,000 by the year-end, ToI reported on July 12. This the central bank intends to do by using UPI QR codes. The RBI had launched the e-rupee for retail transactions on a pilot basis on December 1, 2022.

Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group has launched a digital banking service in the United States, as Japan's number two lender aims to tap growth in the US consumer banking market, a bank executive said on Wednesday. Sumitomo Mitsui is providing personal loans through a newly created online banking division of Manufacturers Bank, a California state-chartered bank wholly owned by the Japanese group.

Rohit Kapoor, chief executive of Swiggy's food delivery business, said he had shifted his focus back to growth over the past few months, instead of profitability, which is what he’d chased since joining the firm nearly a year ago. He said he doesn’t have the ‘luxury’ to choose between growth and profitability and is trying to balance both. Kapoor, who was the global chief marketing officer at Oyo before joining Swiggy last August, told ET that both growth and profitability are significant for Swiggy, and the food business can expand by around 20% annually.

A full-size cricket bat can help you bring in your A-game and play effortlessly well. If you are looking for the best cricket bats for adults on Amazon, you have come to the right place. Check out our picks 6 of the top cricket bats for adults in India.

India Today, the arrest took place in the Crossings Republik area after receiving information from the Intelligence Bureau. The First Information Report (FIR) states that Naveen Pal shared classified information about the finance ministry and the G20 meeting with an individual in Karachi, Pakistan. Investigation into the case revealed that Naveen Pal communicated the information through the messaging app WhatsApp.

Companies like digital identity verification services provider IDfy, digital signature services company EMudhra and Signzy, which offers online identity verification, are looking for business opportunities in the Middle East, Southeast Asia and even the Americas. Besides these players who are commonly clubbed under regtech, or tech companies operating in the regulatory domain, other software-led fintechs are also looking outside India. Spocto, a debt-collections platform which is owned by fintech unicorn Yubi, has opened operations in Dubai.

Signal or Telegram could be «over regulated» with the threat of encryption being compromised, said technology policy experts after the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) proposed to regulate such services in its consultation paper released last week. OTT services are currently regulated under the IT Act, which will soon be replaced by the proposed Digital India Bill.

The leading cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (BTC), has maintained its upward trajectory and remains well above the $30,000 level. 

Mumbai: India’s second largest state-owned lender Bank of Baroda on Tuesday denied its officials used phone numbers of strangers to inflate registrations on its mobile banking app bob World.   A report by Al Jazeera alleged that bank officials linked bank accounts to unrelated mobile numbers in order to achieve stiff onboarding targets. The report cited internal emails of the bank to state that that branches were asked to conduct a “discreet inquiry" into the issue and to recommend whether those mobile numbers should be withdrawn.   “The bank has a current mobile banking activated user base of 30 million customers, all of whom are linked to a unique mobile number seeded with their bank account," a spokesperson for Bank of Baroda said in an emailed statement.   The spokesperson said a fully system-authenticated and customer consent-based process has been and is currently being followed for undertaking any mobile banking app registrations in the bank.  Bank of Baroda’s app has seen its base of activated users grow from 19.6 million in FY22 to 30 million in FY23, as per data available on its investor presentations.

Disney is exploring strategic options for its Star India business, including a joint venture or a sale, a sign of strain at one of the premier properties it acquired from Fox. The company has talked to at least one bank about ways to help the India business grow, while sharing some of the costs, according to people familiar with the matter. The talks are in the early stages and it is unclear which options, if any, Disney might pursue.

New Delhi: Union Home Minister Amit Shah will address the inaugural session of the G20 conference on crime and security to be held in Gurugram on July 13, the ministry of home affairs said in a statement. The two-day 'G20 Conference on Crime and Security in the Age of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), Artificial Intelligence and Metaverse' will bring together over 900 participants from member countries, nine special invitee countries, international bodies and technology leaders and domain experts from India and across the world, it added.

Kevin Vaz has formally joined Viacom18 as the CEO of its TV business, sources privy to the development have said. He was previously the head of the entertainment business at Disney Star. His last day at the company was June 13.

Sudipta Roy, will need to focus on the execution of retail strategy, improving collection efficiency and ensuring an uneventful reduction in the wholesale loan book, analysts said. While the company has pivoted towards retail loans and despite its fast growth pace, the overhang of the wholesale book means that the company's assets have been shrinking. This comes even as higher-rated peers Bajaj Finance and Cholamandalam Investment & Finance are growing their loans at 20-30%.

gin brands owned by large companies regained market share in 2022 after small handmade batches of local brands, especially from Goa, stirred up the segment over the past three years. While most brands, big and small, increased sales in double digits, Bombay Sapphire, Jaisalmer, Beefeater and Big Ben more than doubled their sales, outpacing craft gin brands, according to the latest IWSR Drinks Market Analysis report sourced from industry executives. At the same time, newer entrants, including Samsara, Hapusa and Stranger & Sons, increased sales 50-70 per cent.

₹400 crore Qualified Institutional Placement (QIP) on late Tuesday evening, a person with knowledge of the development said. The company has allowed for a ₹100 crore allotment for oversubscription, which could take the total deal size to over ₹500 crore. The QIP is being managed by Axis Capital and ICICI Securities, the person cited above said, asking to be anonymous.