Six Step Plan For ONDC To Replicate The Success of UPI

Open Network for Digital Commerce seeks to increase the penetration of digital commerce in India by enabling companies to plug into its open and interoperable ecommerce protocol and thereby complete their ecommerce solutions. Setting up an e-commerce platform requires putting together diverse elements and working towards making each element a success. ONDC, on the other … Read more

Seven Money-Making Schemes That Sound Too Good To Be True – But Are True

According to the old adage, “If it’s too good to be true, it’s a scam”. In times of rampant fraud, like we’re seeing in the crypto world now, many people are repeating this warning. Take the OP of this LinkedIn Post for example. I’m sure they’re all well-meaning. I’m also sure that their warning is … Read more

Calling BS On The Meme “Banks Privatize Profits And Socialize Losses”

I first heard the meme “Banks privatize profits and socialize losses” soon after some banks were bailed out during the Great Financial Crisis of 2007-8 in USA. The narrative was, when banks do well, they distribute their profits to their employees and shareholders whereas when they do badly, they palm off their losses to taxpayers … Read more

How Do Banks Make Money From Credit Card Business?

Banks have created the impression that they love credit cardholders who pay only the minimum balance every month and revolve their outstandings so that they can earn juicy interest off of them. This has led the Average Joe / Jane credit cardholder to think that banks make money only on interest, and believe that they … Read more

Economic Times Publishes My Piece On “PPI Via UPI” Payments

Finance is full of hair splitting as I warned in Hair Splitting In Finance. Payments is no exception. In Retail Payments Primer, I highlighted that credit card, debit card, wallet, UPI and other retail methods of payments (MOPs) are not equal. Now National Payments Corporation of India would like us to appreciate that there are … Read more

ISO 20022: Waiting For Godot Moment

Limitation in field length of payment messages causes endless number of problems in electronic payments. Let me give a few examples: I was unable to fit the payee name MCS MERIDIAN CLIENT ACCOUNT HOUSE RENT 98 MERIDIAN PLACE JUN 2008 in the payee field of my bank’s payment screen. My bank told me to change … Read more

How AI Can Take Readability Of Bills And Statements To The Next Level

In Bills And Statements Are Hard To Decipher, we noted that it was very hard to read bills and statements from banks, ecommerce companies, retailers and other industries. We took two examples and did a deep dive to understand the full extent of the indecipherability problem: Ecommerce Bill Bank Statement In this post, we will … Read more

Shortselling For Normies

(This is a commentary on how shortselling works and not a guide to carry out shortselling.) I recently posted the following update on social media: @s_ketharaman: Startup Idea: Hindenburg Research of India. Conduct research in India. Launch hit jobs on foreign companies. 10% of large publicly traded firms in USA allegedly commit securities fraud, so … Read more

Revisiting Recurring Payments On The First Anniversary Of RBI Emandate

According to RBI Emandate: Every credit card and debit card based mandate for recurring payment and auto debit (“Standing Instruction”) will need to be re-initiated by the merchant in accordance with the new rules (henceforth “RegEM”), and processed by the issuer bank differently from before. RegEM, which came into effect from 1 October 2021, stipulated … Read more

Why Are Bills And Statements So Frigging Hard To Decipher?

People regularly complain that it’s very hard to decipher bills and statements from banks. Rant from Quora: Why are the description info on Bank Account Statements so confusing? We cannot find what is the debit for and from whom the payment / transfer has come in. End of the month when you see the statement … Read more