11-Dec-2018: SWIFT India appointed ex-SBI chief Arundhati Bhattacharya as the new chairman of its board.
SWIFT Indi has appointed ex-SBI chief Arundhati Bhattacharya as the new chairman of its board.
SWIFT India is a joint venture of top Indian public and private sector banks and SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication).
Bhattacharya will succeed former banker M V Nair, who is stepping down after completing five years with the company.
The company was created to deliver high quality domestic financial messaging services to the Indian financial community.
Bhattacharya said the venture has a huge potential to contribute significantly to the financial community in many domains.
19-Nov-2018: warning to SWIFT by U.S. Treasury Steven Mnuchin
The Head of the US Treasury Steven Mnuchin has announced that Washington wants the world-wide payment network to cut off its services to the entities that were affected by Iran sanctions and warned that otherwise SWIFT might be sanctioned as well.
The US will reintroduce sanctions against Tehran that were earlier lifted under the Iran nuclear deal, on November 5. These sanctions will affect the country’s energy, banking, and shipping sectors.
What is SWIFT?
The SWIFT is a global member-owned cooperative that is headquartered in Brussels, Belgium. It was founded in 1973 by a group of 239 banks from 15 countries which formed a co-operative utility to develop a secure electronic messaging service and common standards to facilitate cross-border payments. It carries an average of approximately 26 million financial messages each day. In order to use its messaging services, customers need to connect to the SWIFT environment.
Functions: SWIFT does not facilitate funds transfer: rather, it sends payment orders, which must be settled by correspondent accounts that the institutions have with each other. The SWIFT is a secure financial message carrier — in other words, it transports messages from one bank to its intended bank recipient. Its core role is to provide a secure transmission channel so that Bank A knows that its message to Bank B goes to Bank B and no one else. Bank B, in turn, knows that Bank A, and no one other than Bank A, sent, read or altered the message enroute. Banks, of course, need to have checks in place before actually sending messages.
Significance of SWIFT:
- Messages sent by SWIFT’s customers are authenticated using its specialised security and identification technology.
- Encryption is added as the messages leave the customer environment and enter the SWIFT Environment.
- Messages remain in the protected SWIFT environment, subject to all its confidentiality and integrity commitments, throughout the transmission process while they are transmitted to the operating centres (OPCs) where they are processed — until they are safely delivered to the receiver.
3-Oct-2018: SIDBI launches a National Level Entrepreneurship Awareness Campaign, Udyam Abhilasha
On the occasion of Birth Anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi i.e. October 02, 2018, Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI), had launched a National Level Entrepreneurship Awareness Campaign, Udyam Abhilasha in 115 Aspirational Districts identified by NITI Aayog in 28 States and reaching to around 15,000 youth. SIDBI will join to contribute to “the transformation mission” unleashed for these districts. The campaign would be running parallelly from 3rd October to 8th October, 2018 across India. The campaign would create and strengthen cadre of more than 800 trainers to provide entrepreneurship training to the aspiring youths across these districts thus encouraging them to enter the admired segment of entrepreneurs.
SIDBI has partnered with CSC e-Governance Services India Limited, a Special Purpose Vehicle, (CSC SPV) set up by the Ministry of Electronics & IT, Govt. of India for implementing the campaign through their CSCs. The objectives of the missionary campaign includes :- (i) to inspire rural youth in aspirational districts to be entrepreneurs by assisting them to set up their own enterprise, (ii) to impart trainings through digital medium across the country, (iii) to create business opportunities for CSC VLEs, (iv) to focus on women aspirants in these aspirational districts to encourage women entrepreneurship and (v) to assist participants to become bankable and avail credit facility from banks to set up their own enterprise.
SIDBI is also taking-up with stakeholders including Banks, NABARD, NBFCs, SFBs, District Industries Centres, State Govt. etc. to be a part of this campaign and ensure multifold impact. Further, CSC Village Level entrepreneurs (VLEs) would play role of catalyst for these aspiring entrepreneurs. Apart from training, VLEs would also provide handholding support to the aspirants to establish new units by assisting them in availing loans for their enterprise and making them aware about various initiatives of Government of India like Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana, SUI etc. and educate the youths in these districts on business literacy.
Speaking about the campaign, Shri Mohammad Mustafa, IAS, CMD, SIDBI said “As the task of transforming ‘Aspirational Districts’ is challenging, SIDBI has taken a bold step by entering into these aspirational districts and working on ground level activities in these areas, to create livelihood and promote sustainable development. This is part of our programmatic approach to induce entrepreneurship as dream choice by turning job seekers as job creators. We are connecting different dots through policy advocacy initiatives of MSE Pulse & CriSidEx, entrepreneurship series & campaigns, revamping digital aggregator portal, free access to project profiles and so on. Idea is to remove information asymmetry and make the youths in these ‘resource challenged’ districts to be ‘access rich’.”
Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI), is the Principal Financial Institution for the Promotion, Financing, Development and Coordination of the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) sector. SIDBI meets the financial and developmental needs of the MSME sector with a Credit+ approach to make it strong, vibrant and globally competitive. SIDBI, under its revamped strategy SIDBI 2.0, has adopted the theme of ease of access to MSEs and being Impact Multiplier & Digital Aggregator. Efforts have been initiated to strengthen the eco system both in setting up and stepping up stages of business cycle. To take the agenda forward, SIDBI has had series of initiatives.
25-May-2018: SIDBI to extend direct funding facility to village level entrepreneurs in common service centres(CSCs).
Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the special purpose vehicle that operates common service centres (CSE SPV) for providing financial support to CSCs across the country.
Common Services Centers (CSC) scheme is one of the mission mode projects under the Digital India Programme. CSCs are the access points for delivery of services to citizens. Through the MoU, SIDBI seeks to extend financial support to the village level entrepreneurs (VLEs) of common services centers, with a minimum one year of operation, under the direct financing window of SIDBI.
CSC SPV will approve the list of VLEs, within 25km distance of SIDBI branch offices, who require financial support. To avail the loan, the VLEs need to submit their CSC project, with maximum project outlay of Rs3.50 lakh and term loan requirement not exceeding Rs 2 lakh per project.
Through the MoU, both CSC SPV and SIDBI seek to work together to bring more citizens under the ambit of financial inclusion. It also seeks to enhance the financial viability of CSCs by including additional services in their bouquet of products.
16-Aug-2018: NPCI launches UPI 2.0 with overdraft facility
National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has upgraded unified payments interface (UPI) with enhanced security features and overdraft facilities. In addition to current and savings accounts, customers can link their overdraft account to UPI.
The UPI mandate could be used in a scenario where money is to be transferred later by providing commitment at present.
UPI is a path breaking innovation that is unprecedented globally. Its high volume, low cost and highly scalable architecture built on an open source platform is key to India’s transformation to a digital payment economy.
The first version of UPI was launched on April 11, 2016 and in the last two years the platform has emerged as a popular choice among users for sending and receiving money. BHIM UPI has recorded transactions worth ₹ 45,845 crore and 235 million in terms of value and volume in the month of July 2018.
28-Jul-2017: NPCI receives final nod from RBI to function as Bharat Bill Payment Central Unit
National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the umbrella organisation for all retail payment systems has received a final nod from the Reserve Bank of India to function as the Bharat Bill Payment Central Unit (BBPCU) and operate the Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS).
On August 31, 2016, 8 BBPS operating units, which received in-principle approval from RBI, took part in the pilot. Almost after a year of running the pilot, streamlining the technology and business processes, NPCI has now received final clearance from RBI.
There is a specific direction from RBI to operate the Central Unit as a Strategic Business Unit of NPCI. Nearly 45 crore bills comprising electricity, telecom, DTH, water and gas are permitted under BBPS. This initiative will provide a major push to digital payments as it is a big step forward in formalising the bill payment system in the country.
The total number of Bharat Bill Payment Operating Units (BBPOU) certified by NPCI now stands at 24. The certified units include three public sector banks (Bank of Baroda, Union Bank of India and Indian Overseas Bank), 10 private banks, five cooperative banks and six non-bank biller aggregators.
Currently, 42 large billers in five utility sectors have been on-boarded. Major public sector banks including State Bank of India (SBI) are still under certification.
At present the bulk of transactions on BBPS are towards payment of electricity bills. The power sector potentially contributes to about 18 crore bills each month, of which only 10 per cent is digital. The likelihood of meeting the target of generating 25 billion digital transactions during the current financial year depends critically on the power sector getting on-boarded on the BBPS system.
The Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS) is an RBI conceptualised system driven by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). It is a one-stop payment platform for all bills, providing an interoperable and accessible “Anytime Anywhere” bill payment service to customers across the country with certainty, reliability and safety of transactions.