Gadgets
Why Big Banks Can’t Keep Pace With India’s Mobile Payments Revolution
Number of Reported Outages
The banks are coming up short in a hotly competitive market. India’s central bank estimates the number of online transactions grew 500 percent in the past five years. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has called for homegrown solutions to bridge the country’s yawning digital divide, but overseas companies have moved aggressively into payments as well. Amazon, Facebook, and Google are pouring billions of dollars into building their own ecosystems for apps, linking payments to the retail networks of thousands of mom and pop stores. They’ve been able to piggyback on India’s innovative Unified Payments Interface, a retail payments platform that lets banks and apps interact seamlessly.
In India’s tightly regulated financial sphere, financial technology companies still need banks to complete transactions and offer services such as loans. But banks in India risk seeing a repeat of what’s happened in China, where customer engagement and loyalty have shifted from conventional banks to fintech brands. “Over a period of time these global big tech firms will be able to take away market share,” says Mahesh Ramamoorthy, managing director of banking solutions at FIS India. “Banks will be more on the back end, settling these transactions than facing online customers.”
Share of Online Retail Payments in India by Volume
On the afternoon of November 21, online transactions for HDFC Bank’s 56 million customers crashed when diesel-powered back-up generators at its data centre on the fringes of financial capital Mumbai failed to fire up after the main power failed. The outage lasted for several hours and also disrupted service for some customers of Google Pay, HDFC Bank’s online payments partner.
HDFC Bank staff had flagged risks stemming from a lack of adequate tech infrastructure as early as 2017 after they started noticing brief but frequent downtimes, according to people familiar with the matter. But it took HDFC Bank more than three years to shift to a new data centre, and the transition wasn’t complete when the November outage happened, the people say.
It was one of about 14 tech glitches for HDFC Bank over the past 12 months. The government-backed State Bank of India has seen its Internet and mobile banking go down 68 times over that period, while the second largest private lender ICICI Bank Ltd. had 21 outages, according to data published by Down Detector. Ten of India’s top 30 banks recorded a 3 percent failure in transactions over the payments backbone in September 2020, according to a PwC report.
HDFC Bank CEO Sashidhar Jagdishan has said the lender is working on “war footing” to strengthen its digital capabilities. A central bank investigation will determine when the ban on new digital offerings will lift. “We have also utilised the time to not only reinforce our platforms but also strategise and re-skill our work force,” a bank spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
Digital Payments in India
The Reserve Bank of India, the nation’s central bank and top financial regulator, has also questioned SBI about the reported glitches on its internet banking and mobile apps, according to people familiar with the matter. SBI is putting more resources into its private cloud and expanding the capacity of its data centers, they say. SBI didn’t respond to emails seeking comments. The central bank didn’t respond to questions about the outages. But at an industry conclave in March, Reserve Bank Governor Shaktikanta Das urged banks to strengthen cyber security and tech infrastructure.
Despite the problems, online transactions are expected to keep growing quickly. But for that banks will need to spend more on technology. “It is as if the living room was kept clean but the attic was messy,” says Vivek Belgavi, a partner and leader of the fintech practice at PwC India. “Banks need to reprioritise and fix their core infrastructure. The need of the hour is intent and speed to do so.”
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“At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games,” Haiyan Zhang, GM, Xbox Gaming AI, said in a blog post. “This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.”
The aforementioned AI design copilot is a toolset that will help game designers turn prompts into scripts and dialogue trees. In contrast, the character runtime will enable dynamically generated plot beats and quests. We’ve already seen heavy AI integration in games by way of procedural generation — a more recent example being the 1000+ planets in Starfield. Not to mention, enemy AI has been around for way longer.
Inworld made headlines in August when it launched a modded story mode for Grand Theft Auto V, Sentient Streets, in which players had to investigate the rise of a bizarre AI-worshipping cult — a segment loaded with characters that spoke in AI-generated dialogue, on the fly. The mod was later taken down by publisher Take-Two, leaving a permanent strike on the creator Bloc’s YouTube channel. As per The Verge, Inworld’s AI technology can also be used for narration in top-down RPGs to warn players about any events awaiting off-screen and respond to questions like we’ve seen in the past year with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Microsoft has also been heavily banking on artificial intelligence, having made a $10 billion (about Rs. 83,254 crore) investment in OpenAI. The company has also integrated AI tools into its popular suite of services and also added an AI copilot to Windows.
Despite being a Microsoft-affiliated AI toolset, it would be interesting to see whether titles using them will be allowed to thrive on other platforms. In July, Valve claimed that it would be cracking down on games that included AI-generated assets if the developer didn’t own the copyright to the piece of art. For the uninitiated, when you insert a prompt to create something in AI, the software simply repurposes existing assets found online and mushes them together — basically stealing from other artists and writers without appropriate commercial licenses. Infringing them would lead to the game not being distributed on Steam, forcing the developers to seek proper licenses for the asset by reaching out to the AI companies involved. It’s unclear how Microsoft’s partnership will play out — as long as AI content is being used as a catalyst to innovate and create something new, it should be fine.
In a post on X shared by BSNL’s Andhra Pradesh (@bsnl_ap_circle) unit, the company confirmed that BSNL users can upgrade their older 2G or 3G SIMs to a 4G SIM for free. Not only will the upgrade be free, but a promotional image shared with the post suggests that users who opt for the upgrade will also receive 4GB of free data that will be valid for three months. It is speculated that BSNL is aiming to boost its upcoming 4G services with this offer. The announcement was first spotted by Telecom Talk.
To access the free data offer and the free upgrade, BSNL users are requested to get in touch with executives at BSNL’s Customer Service Centre, franchisee or retailer stores, or contact one of their Direct Selling Agents (DSA). The promo image also adds in a finer print that the offer is available with certain terms and conditions, but hasn’t detailed any, so far.
Reliance’s Jio recently launched the 4G-supported Bharat B1 feature phone in India. The handset is priced at Rs. 1,299 in India. Alongside 4G connectivity, the phone comes with JioCinema and JioSaavn applications pre-installed.
The Jio Bharat B1 is equipped with the JioPay application, which is said to allow users to make UPI payments. Aiming to increase accessibility, the phone supports 23 languages overall, including multiple regional languages.
Realme, via Weibo, announced the arrival of the Realme GT 5 Pro in China. The display of the handset is confirmed to offer 3000 nits peak brightness. It has also been teased to offer heat dissipation with a surface area of around 10,000mm2. It is confirmed to ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The post doesn’t specify the exact launch date of the smartphone, however, given the release of the teasers, the launch could be just around the corner.
The Realme GT 5 Pro has been in the news a lot lately. It is expected to feature a 6.78-inch (1,264×2,780 pixels) AMOLED display and is tipped to come in 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB RAM options along with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB inbuilt storage options.
For optics, the Realme GT 5 Pro is said to have a triple rear camera unit comprising two 50-megapixel sensors and an 8-megapixel shooter at the rear. The camera setup might include a Sony LYTIA LYT808 sensor, an OmniVision OV08D10 secondary sensor, and a Sony IMX890 telephoto sensor. For selfies, there could be a 32-megapixel sensor at the front. It is said to carry a 5,400mAh battery with support for 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.
The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come with upgrades over Realme GT 5. The latter was launched in China in August with a price tag of CNY 2,999 for the base model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
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