APAC, Digital Advancement of 5 years in 5 months
The Fletcher School at Tufts University, in partnership with Mastercard unveiled the Digital Intelligence Index, which charts the progress economies have made in advancing their digitalization, fostering trust and integrating connectivity into the lives of billions.Notably across Asia Pacific, Singapore, Hong Kong SAR, South Korea and Chinese Taipei are amongst the most digitally dynamic economies. South Korea and Chinese Taipei have significantly outperformed the OECD growth rate in Q2 2020 amidst the global lockdown. These economies feature high levels of available talent, active R&D collaboration between industry and academia, and a strong record of creating and bringing digital products into the mainstream.
Other key findings include
With nearly two thirds of the world’s population online today, we are entering an ‘after access’ phase, where access alone is not enough. Aspects such as the quality of access, effective use of digital technologies, accountable institutions, robust data governance policies and fostering trust are greater factors in determining digital competitiveness and sustainability. Young people in emerging economies are demonstrating high levels of digital engagement, a bright spot for governments attempting to expand digitalization in their economies.
Covid Economy sees a growth in digital advertising
According to reports, media owners’ liner advertising revenues decreased by an estimated -18% in 2020. However digital advertising continued to grow at +8% to reach $336 billion.
AI alone can add $500 billion to economy: Google India
Google India has said that artificial intelligence alone can add USD 500 billion to the economy, and assist in better forecast of floods and accurate diagnosis of diseases. The company has committed USD 10 billion for expanding India’s digital footprint, its top official in India Sanjay Gupta said. Google had recently picked up a 7.73 per cent stake in Reliance Industries Ltd’s (RIL) digital subsidiary, Jio Platforms Ltd. The two companies have also announced plans to come up with “an entry-level affordable smartphone”. Gupta said during the pandemic, data consumption jumped to 14 GB per month from 8 GB. In 2014, the average consumption was just 86 MB per month, he added. He also said that by 2022, UPI transactions will reach the one-billion-a-day mark from around a billion per month at present.
Razorpay and Paypal partner to help take MSMEs global
Razorpay and PayPal have come together to enable seamless international payments for MSMEs and freelancers. Razorpay’s businesses will integrate with PayPal and accept payments from international customers from across 200 markets in a convenient and secure manner. By integrating PayPal into Razorpay’s payment platform, freelancers and MSMEs will now be able to accept international payments without having to write a single line of code. Having heavily reduced wait-times for statutory approvals, this new service will be one of the fastest ways to accept digital payments, a boon for Indian entrepreneurs.
Paytm + Suryoday for insta-loans to MSMEs
Paytm announced its partnership with Suryoday Small Finance Bank to empower MSMEs with instant digital loans. This is the first lending partnership for Paytm with a small finance bank to help merchants get loans seamlessly. Collaboration between Paytm and Suryoday Small Finance Bank aims at broadening the lending landscape and Promote financial inclusion by offering collateral-free loans.The company through this partnership is aiming at disbursing loans to over 1 lakh small businesses in the next 12 months to 18 months. Paytm has made the entire process of availing loans completely digital and hassle-free so that merchants can transact with the bank and take loans with just a tap on the phone. Merchants will not have to visit the bank branch as the entire journey from application to approval will be completed on the Paytm app itself.
Banking on the future of ‘Voice‘: Indian banks
Voice technology was already on the rise in India before the pandemic. But the virus ― and the subsequent need for both human-injected and contactless experiences ― served to increase both its pace and popularity. Our desire not to touch ATM screens, cash and visit bank branches and still have our lives go on, as usual, is becoming a reality sooner than imagined. The recent study from Cognizant, The Future of Voice, revealed that 94% of banking and financial services executives surveyed in India believe that the shift towards voice will only accelerate in the future and 72% said voice is important or extremely important for their bank’s future success. With voice interfaces becoming an integral part of consumers’ lives, it will be naïve to assume that they will ever go back to the old ways of interacting with banks. Voice technology can make interactions with brands more natural and seamless, which is exactly what consumers want. The future of voice is already here, and banks need a voice strategy to up their customer experience game. The Cognizant study suggests that voice is no longer optional for banks as 55% of them plan to develop a formal voice strategy in the next 12-24 months. Activating voice across the business value chain requires a strong commitment upfront. On average, Indian banks surveyed plan to spend 2.8% of their revenues on building voice capabilities in the next five years. And they’ve got high expectations for returns, as they’re aiming to drive 6.2% of their revenue through voice during the same period.
Slow start for WhatsApp Pay, has under 1% share
WhatsApp’s payments service in India through the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is off to a slow start in its first month on the network with less than 1% volume share. This comes when it is still in the process of gradually rolling out its payments service to the current limit of 20 million users. Till November 4, it was restricted to 1 million users only. It is estimated to have clocked under 20 million transactions last month, two sources said. Overall, UPI saw 2.2 billion transactions in November compared to 2.1 billion in October, registering a growth of close to 7%, according to data from National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which manages UPI. WhatsApp has 400 million monthly active users in India and got the approval to start payments after two and a half years due to regulatory issues. For now, it allows peer-to-peer payments only and peer-to-merchant payments haven’t been enabled.