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How SBI Cards is Fighting the UPI / e-Payments Onslaught ?

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The low starting point of digital payments, has led to mass adoption of all types of digital payment products and are growing at a healthy pace in their respective playing fields. Market share gains of UPI in digital payments should be seen as an expansion of digital payments in customer or merchant segments that have not been target credit card segments. In this backdrop, let us examine what SBI Credit Cards is doing to wade off the onslaught from UPI & Mobile Wallets.

Credit Cards are meant for P2M (person to merchant) payments and not for P2P (person to person) payments. Most of the rapid rise in UPI payments belongs to the P2P category. Data on UPI payments in P2M categories started to be reported from April 2020. UPI P2M payments have also seen a strong rise although the value of spends is broadly comparable to credit card and

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Credit Card Most Profitable Business of Indian Banks

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Credit Card lending is the most profitable business vertical of Indian Bank / Financial services company. High profitability is driven largely by the high yielding unsecured credit business. While share of fee income is high in total revenues (~50% of total income net of interest expenses), most of the fees (penalties, etc.) are credit-linked. The credit card penetration in India is quite low at 62 Cards per 1,000 working people.

Fees such as annual subscription charges are also largely recovered from customers that are borrowers or who have very low spending. The affluent customers, normally the transactors, account for most of the spending and help the credit card issuers screen as a potent marketing channel to manufacturers / traders. This enables the credit card issuer to

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Retail Loan Inquiries Improve + Delinquencies at FINTECH & NBFCS – CIBIL

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In the COVID-19 pandemic times, retail credit inquiry volumes in October 2020 were 81% of last year October levels. Enquiry volumes have improved in home loans as well as Loan Against Properties (LAP). Auto and 2W loans have also seen rebound in volumes due to shift in consumer preferences. Personal loan volumes are yet to rebound impacted by fintechs-driven growth during the pre-Covid time. State owned PSU banks have been the earliest to recommence lending followed by private banks. NBFCs have seen much slower recovery. Further, semi-urban and rural have seen better rebound. For Sep 2020, PSU banks inquiry volumes are at 1.2X yoy whereas private banks are at ~0.9X and NBFCs at 0.6X. Although slow initially, credit cards are now showing better traction. PSU banks have shown better growth pick-up compared to

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India Mobile Payment & Fintech Platforms Preparing for IPO

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With a huge population and its affinity towards the mobile / smartphones, India is one of the most attractive market for fintech disruption driven by increasing high speed internet penetration. Penetration of digital C2B [Consumer 2 Business] payments (cards, UPI, wallets) is expected to increase multi-fold to touch 1/3rd of the transactions by 2025. UPI payments are expected to grow at ~50% CAGR driven by UPI QR payments for merchants. Debit Cards & Credit cards are expected to grow at ~23% CAGR. Overall share of UPI is expected to increase 50-55% of digital payments by 2025, while cards would be 40-45%.

Sensing this opportunity a decade ago, Vijay Shekar Sharma ventured to found Paytm, the leading mobile payment platform with 150-200 Mn active users and 15+ Mn merchant having adopted the payments channel with 120,000 using its PoS terminals. Ambitions didn’t stop for Sharma backed by Venture capitalists such as Softbank, ANT Financials and

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UPI Mobile Payments Growing Exponentially

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UPI mobile payments through mobile apps has been one of the biggest contributors to retail digital transactions in India. The pay mode now accounts for around half the retail digital transactions in volume terms, while its value share is around 10% (due to relatively small average per transaction value compared to NEFT/IMPS). UPI’s market share gains have mainly come at the expense of other traditional digital pay-modes such as NEFT, Credit cards and PPIs (pre-paid instruments like mobile wallets). Some contributing factors to the success of UPI have been Demonetization, mobile-first approach, instant bank-bank fund transfers, subsidy on transaction costs, growing penetration of mobile phones as well as Internet connectivity and early adoption by

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Digital Payments & Lending Revolution in Indian FinTech Space

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The Digital Payments landscape in India has been revolutionized by the regulators and the banks’ proactive initiatives, e.g., IndiaStack and UPI. It is quite surprising that India has emerged as one of the most exciting markets for digital payments across the world. Last year, home-grown payment networks (RuPay and UPI) took a lion’s share of the total digital transactions, ~65%, showcasing how for once the Government efforts have been in the right direction for achieving targets.

Popular Payment methods are e-wallets, UPI, biometric payments, BharatQR code, and sound-wave-based payment technologies. One of the primary reasons can be attributed to the forward-thinking of central & state governments and Reserve Bank of India for successfully bringing a digital payment revolution in India. Buoyed by the success of Virtual Payment Address – UPI (it’s like your e-mail id), Google wrote to the US Federal Reserve, about UPI model adopted in India and recommended creating

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