White Label ATMs in India – The march continues

            Slowly and steadily the White Label ATMs are spreading their wings all over the country.

            Indicash has the first mover’s advantage and has over 1,800 ATMs now. The Indicash ATM has got its own website too.

            Prizm Payment with its brand MoneySpot ATMs is in the 2^nd spot, with 1,000+ ATMs. However, MoneySpot is yet to have its own website.

            BTI Payments Pvt. Ltd. is slowly stabilizing its operations in Karnataka in the initial phase.

                        Muthoot Finance Ltd.  ATMs brand name is Muthoot ATM. At present, Muthoot is running a campaign to attract transactions to its ATM chain.

              Vakrangee Ltd. has opened its account with the setting up of 2 ATMs in July 2014.

           

New Safe ePayments Booster-Contactless Payments for Donkey rides

            One of the major attractions in Blackpool Beach is the Donkey Rides. Yes, Donkey Rides are a great way to enjoy the Blackpool beach.

            The first Donkey rides in Blackpool were introduced in the late 1890s’. It is believed that Margate was the first place to offer Donkey rides on the beach to tourists.

The donkey’s owner has to ensure that the donkeys pass a series of inspections. For the donkeys to be allowed to work on Blackpools beach they must first pass a veterinarian’s inspection, plus a mandatory annual health check. Then their owners have to present the donkeys, their health certificate and the insurance certificate to Blackpool councils officials. If all is well only than the donkeys are allowed to work.

            One of the pain points the children who wished to ride or the donkey owners faced is the absence of monetary change.            Due to non-availability of the change, many children missed the famous Blackpool Donkey rides.

            In this era of ePayments, Mark Ineson, owner of the beachside Real Donkeys company, approached Barclays to help him out with a simple electronic payment solution which would be gainful for himself, kids, kids parents and the donkeys.

             Barclaycard technologists collaborated with designers Seymourpowell  to build Dillon’s new tack, ensuring the technology was seamlessly integrated and the saddle a comfortable fit.

            The end result was, Dillon the donkey has got the world’s first contactless payment saddle. 

In simple terms, this innovation means that parents can touch a contactless credit or debit card (from any bank that offers the technology) to pay for a ride down the Blackpool Sands.

23/08/2014 – Holiday in Karnataka under Negotiable Instruments Act 1881 - Impact

                Iconic Kannada writer, academician and thinker U R Ananthamurthy passed away at a private hospital in the City on Friday evening.

                As a mark of respect for the departed writer, Karnataka Government has declared a 3 Day State mourning. Educational institutions too are closed.

                Banks and other Financial Institutions are closed as the State Government has declared the holiday under Negotiable Instruments Act 1881.

A bank holiday in India is a public holiday which is declared specially for the Banks and other Financial Institutions. Not all public holidays are classified as Bank Holidays. Bank Holidays are declared by Central/State Governments/ Union Territory under the Negotiable Instruments (NI) Act, 1881.

The 82-year-old Jnanpith awardee died of multiple organ failure at 6:33 pm. Dr H Sudarshan Ballal, director of Manipal Hospital, said that Ananthamurthy was admitted to the hospital 10 days ago.

Impact of the sudden Bank Holiday:

01)   Physical transactions will be affected

02)   Online Transactions will function as usual, as RTGS/NEFT is open.

03)   Clearing will take a major hit, with Inward Cheques being received and debited to respective customer’s accounts.  Cash cannot be deposited in case of insufficient balance to clear the inward cheques.

60 million Indonesians can now receive money electronically

8 Top facts of the new electronic money service Indonesians’ can experience: -

1. ‘Indosat’, Indonensia’s leading mobile company has a base of 60 million subscribers
2. Though a tieup with HomeSend, 6.5 milion Indonesians staying abroad can send remittances to Indosat subscribers spread across Indonesia.
3. The remittance services will be available through Indosat’s Dompetku Mobile Money Platform.
4. HomeSend will also be the first international remittance provider to give users access to Dompetku’s 24,000 locations.
5. The HomeSend service enables consumers to send money to and from mobile money accounts, payment cards, bank accounts or cash outlets – regardless of their location or that of the recipient.
6. The World Bank estimates that in total, $7.5B in remittance payments will be made into Indonesia this year.
7. HomeSend is a joint venture created by MasterCard, eServGlobal and BICS that enables B2B cross-border and cross-network value transfers through a single connection.
8. Indosat is a leading telecommunication and information service provider in Indonesia that gives mobile phone services, data communication services, internet services (MIDI), and mobile money services.

Simple steps for successful Aadhaar Payment Bridge Transactions

            The success of APBS depends on the low return rate of the transactions.  User’s confidence in the APBS will grow, if the return % is less.

            Apart from gas subsidy transactions, other types of transactions are also being routed through the APBS now.

            Hence, it is of utmost important that only transactions with genuine reasons are returned by the destination banks.

            To minimize the risks associated with human intervention, NPCI has introduced an automated mapper at their end, to route the transactions to the correct destination banks.

            One of the important components of APBS is the IIN. IIN stands for Institution Identification Number.

            The transaction is routed to the destination bank based on the Aadhaar Number linked to the IIN.

            Since mid-June 14, NPCI has introduced an additional layer of validation to the APB transactions.

            Even if the IIN is included as part of the transaction file, NPCI will validate the transaction against the mapper database.

Only those transactions which pass the Aadhaar Number / IIN linkage test will be sent to the destination bank. This means the APB system will validate the Aadhaar number and the mapping of the IIN to that particular Aadhaar number.

            Otherwise the transactions will get rejected due to the following reasons:

a)    Return Reason 96 – Aadhaar mapping does not exist/Aadhaar number not mapped to IIN

b)   Return Reason 80 – Wrong IIN

c)    Return Reason 95- Inactive Aadhaar

Yes, another drop for Safe ePayments

The above validations are expected to increase the success rate of the final transactions sent to the destination banks.