Top 10 stories of the week: December 04th to 10th December 2017

In no particular order, here are MediaNama’s top 10 stories of the week ended 10th December 2017

MediaNama would like to thank its sponsors: Info Edge, PhonePe & E2E, for their support.

Privacy International raises concerns over IndiaStack & UPI for establishing financial identity

Privacy International, an international organization which advocates the right to privacy, has raised concerns and criticized IndiaStack, Aadhaar eKYC, and the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). To recap, IndiaStack is a set of software APIs which includes Aadhaar Auth, eKYC, eSign, DigiLocker, GST Network and the UPI, which is crucial for the government’s Digital India programme. Read it here

Gaana crosses 50 million monthly users in November

Times Internet-owned music streaming service Gaana crossed 50 million monthly users for the month of November, which is growth of 25% in two months from 40 million active users in the month of September. Read it here

Google invests in Bangalore-based task management startup Dunzo

Bangalore-based concierge-like task management startup Dunzo has raised Series B funding of $12.3 million from Google along with existing investors Aspada Investment Advisors and Blume Ventures, reports VCCircle. Read it here

Ola and Uber’s drivers to protest falling earnings on December 10 in Mumbai

Driver partners associated with online taxi-hailing companies Ola and Uber are calling for an indefinite strike in Mumbai on December 10. The drivers were protesting against falling incomes and driver suicides, reports VCCircle. The publication said that pamphlets were circulated for the strike and said that they would carry out the protest at their offices in Andheri. Read it here

Mobile Wallet transactions declined by 26M to 199.5M in September 2017

For the month ending September 2017, number of transactions using Prepaid Payment Instruments (which includes both Mobile Wallets and PPI Cards combined) decreased by 8% to 240.29 million as compared to 261.4 million in August 2017, and grew 148% compared to 97.07 million in September 2016, according to data from the Reserve Bank of India. Read it here

Govts mandate for Indian language support on phones needs correct implementation

Back in 2014, industry heads assembled under one roof at the #NAMAIndic event. They discussed in detail the nature of the ecosystem for digital media in Indian languages and the underlying issues it faces. These issues can be broadly categorized under incompatibility across devices, fonts and typography, and lack of standardization. Read it here

BHIM accounted for only 8% of UPI transactions in November 2017

The Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM) UPI app saw transactions of 8.2 million for the month of November 2017, and transactions worth Rs 2,553.5 crore, actually declining when there was massive growth in UPI payments. Read it here

RBI cuts MDR on debit cards and introduces separate regime for QR code payments

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) gave final guidelines on the rationalization of the merchant discount rate (MDR) for debit cards on Wednesday and introduce a differentiated regime for acceptance via alternative means such as QR codes. The RBI said that it introduced this to improve the acceptance of debit cards in the country by small merchants. Read it here

Gati e-commerce revenues down by nearly 20% in Q2FY18

Logistics company Gati said that it had e-commerce revenues of Rs 37.5 crore for the quarter ended September 30 (Q2 FY18). This was a decline of 19.53% from Rs 46.6 crore in the same quarter last year. E-commerce revenue has been declining over the past few quarters following demonetization and the introduction of the GST regime. Read it here

MDR guidelines for debit cards: Industry heads ask for more equitable share

The Reserve Bank of India rationalized the merchant discount rate (MDR) on debit cards and has set up a differentiated regime if the transaction occurs on a physical POS machine or it occurs on QR codes through the BharatQR. MDR is an inter-bank exchange fee that banks charge merchants for enabling digital transactions. Read it here