Tag: digital payment

  • WhatsApp unveils latest campaign ‘Scam Se Bacho’

    WhatsApp unveils latest campaign ‘Scam Se Bacho’

    Mumbai: WhatsApp has launched a user-safety campaign titled “Scam Se Bacho,” which will come to life through a music video. The campaign aims to create awareness and educate users on making safer online payments. It is conceptualised by BBDO India and directed by Indian film director and editor Shimit Amin, known for award-winning films like “Chak De! India.”

    The “Scam Se Bacho” music video is a parody rendition of the popular evergreen song, “Dekh Ke Chalo,” and it delivers the socially relevant message of user safety in a fun and breezy tone.

    The new lyrics demonstrate real-life situations in which individuals could be susceptible to scams and reinforce the message of staying safe and exercising caution while making digital payments. It warns users about scams such as falling for bogus lottery schemes, disclosing your UPI PIN over the phone to a phoney customer service representative, or sending money to a scammer posing as a friend without first verifying their identity.

    The goal of the video is to engage the audience through nostalgia and educate them about digital payment safety in the most comforting and memorable way.

    Talking about the music video, WhatsApp India director-payments Manesh Mahatme  said, “While UPI continues to remain one of the safest, most convenient and interoperable modes of making payments, India’s growing acceptance of online payments has also seen an increase in digital payment fraud. User safety is at the core of everything we do at WhatsApp, and through this exciting and captivating music video, we want to educate and empower our users with all the information they need to safeguard themselves against any fraud while making digital payments. We hope that this initiative by WhatsApp will resonate with people and they can sing their way through safe and secure online payments.”

    Talking about the campaign, Meta India director-marketing Avinash Pant said, “India’s growing acceptance of digital payments has also led to an increase in the need to make people aware of how to keep their payments safe. Through this campaign, which is built on several real-world scenarios that people face in their everyday life, our endeavour is to educate and empower users with all the information they need to safeguard themselves against any fraud while making digital payments. This initiative reinforces Whatsapp’s commitment to the safety of our users while making payments as simple and convenient as sending a message.”

    Commenting on the creative treatment of the music video, BBDO India chair and chief creative officer Josy Paul said, “Our primary goal with this music video was to spread awareness and engage the audience sensitively on this subject. We decided to create entertainment that educates rather than advertisements. Our goal of reworking a fun, nostalgic song like “Dekh ke Chalo” was to use the power of music to convey a strong message that’ll help people relate to the moments that we collectively face in our lives. The song triggers memory structures that allow the audience to more easily receive the message. We hope it will encourage people to be more aware next time.”

    Payments on WhatsApp allow users to send and receive money from their contacts via the unified payment interface (UPI) as easily as sending a WhatsApp message. With user safety at its core, payments on WhatsApp are designed with a strong set of security and privacy principles, including entering a personal UPI PIN for each payment.

  • WhatsApp India supports small businesses to go digital; unveils #SMBSaathi Utsav

    WhatsApp India supports small businesses to go digital; unveils #SMBSaathi Utsav

    Mumbai: WhatsApp India on Tuesday unveiled #SMBSaathi Utsav, a programme aimed at supporting small businesses in adopting digital tools like the WhatsApp Business App to conduct their operations. The goal of this programme, which was launched in partnership with Josh Talks, is to educate and assist small businesses in realising their full potential through WhatsApp.

    #SMBSaathi Utsav has kicked off with a pilot in Jaipur’s Johri Bazaar and Bapu Bazaar where 500+ small businesses are being trained on various aspects of running their business online. 

    India is home to approximately 63 million MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises) accounting for 30 per cent of the country’s GDP (gross domestic product) and employing over 110 million people at present. During the pandemic, these businesses were severely affected witnessing a 20-50 per cent decline in their overall earnings. One of the major reasons behind this fall was the lack of market access. To help these businesses revive from this downturn, WhatsApp launched the #SMBSaathi initiative earlier this year. The #SMBSaathi Utsav is the second phase of the #SMBSaathi campaign. 

    The initiative showcased inspiring stories of business owners across India who pivoted to digital ways of doing business during the pandemic. For many of these businesses, WhatsApp was their first digital gateway and an easier & more effective alternative to building and maintaining a website. 

    Businesses across sectors such as traditional arts and handicrafts, jewellery, fashion and apparel, food and beverage outlets and several others are being trained on using the various features of the WhatsApp Business App and are being guided on how they can market their product to the right audiences.

    WhatsApp India head Abhijit Bose said, “We are excited to launch the #SMBSaathi and #SMBSaathi Utsav, programmes that are dedicated to India’s small business community. Small businesses are the backbone of our economy and technology has the potential to further boost their business. During the pandemic, we saw several small business owners thriving by using simple platforms such as WhatsApp Business App to stay connected with their customers. A small beauty salon in suburban Mumbai used WhatsApp Business App to keep her regular customers engaged through the lockdown, a dhaba owner in Gurgaon, is directly connecting with his customers using WhatsApp Business App thus driving an overall efficiency in his operations and reaching newer markets. Examples such as these are a testament to the fact that India’s small business owners have the ambition, passion and creativity to leverage simple and reliable technologies. We are committed to finding new ways of increasing awareness about simple digital tools for businesses to support and celebrate the spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation in India.”

    Jaipur’s Rupam Jewellers owner Arvind Sharma said, “I always thought that taking my business online would be a difficult and tedious process. As small business owners, we have earlier focused only on the traditional ways of doing business. However, the pandemic taught us that it is important to innovate and find new ways of running our business on digital platforms as that is where the audience is today. WhatsApp plays a very important role in our everyday communication with our regular customers and now with my business digitally available on the WhatsApp Business App, it will become a lot easier to connect with newer customers and service them quickly.”

  • PhonePe’s new campaign showcases the ease of buying insurance

    PhonePe’s new campaign showcases the ease of buying insurance

    Mumbai: Digital payments company PhonePe has announced its latest brand campaign “Tension chhodo, Insurance lo” to make customers aware of how insurance can make life easy by staying prepared for unforeseen circumstances.

    The campaign launched during the ongoing T20 World Cup highlights how the insurance buying process on PhonePe is instant, paperless, and mobile-first – making it easily accessible to all users.

    The light-hearted campaign encompassing over 12 films will run on Television, YouTube, Hotstar, and other prime channels. The six-month-long campaign will educate customers on the availability of bike, car, life, and health insurance plans on the PhonePe app. It will also showcase PhonePe’s insurance expertise, scale, size, and trust that customers have on the platform.

    “We launched Insurance a few months back and the response we received from our customers informed us of the need to take a more prominent role in the insurance distribution space,” said PhonePe VP and head of insurance Gunjan Ghai. “Our users place immense trust in us as a brand. We are, thus, in a much better place to reach our customers and offer the right insurance at the right price. With that objective in mind, we have launched a large multi-media integrated campaign to drive awareness and build consideration for PhonePe’s insurance offering over a period of six months.”

  • Cash rules but urban Indian businesses record growth in digital payment: Kantar

    Cash rules but urban Indian businesses record growth in digital payment: Kantar

    NEW DELHI: Going contact-free is gradually becoming the new normal but Indian businesses still have a long way to go. Kantar, world’s leading data, insights and consulting company’s annual report on digital adoption and usage trends in India, ITOPSTM 2019 report indicate that about 42 per cent of urban businesses are aware of UPI/ eWallet as a means of receiving payments from their customers and about 29 per cent of them use UPI/ eWallet for receiving payments. The report further states that, given the size, close to half of the businesses using digital payments are in the retail segment and the ones relatively averse to digital adoption are travel, trade, transport, logistics and education. 

    However, in spite of the fact that about 29 per cent of businesses are accepting UPI/ eWallet, in terms of the share of total receipts of businesses, UPI/ eWallets account for only 6 per cent of the total receipts. Amongst businesses that adopt UPI/ eWallets users too, about 23 per cent of the total receipts are through UPI/eWallet.

    As per ITOPS 2019, cash continues to have the dominant share of the market. Across the entire market, the share of cash is currently 87%. However, amongst the users of UPI/ eWallet, the share of cash is much lower at 58 per cent. This indicates that businesses using UPI/ eWallet are also adopting other Digital Payment options in addition to UPI/ eWallets.

    Tier 1 cities of Delhi and Mumbai lead the adoption of UPI/ eWallets with about 45 per cent of businesses having adopted it. Interestingly, smaller cities like Rohtak, Haldia, etc. also show high adoption with more than one in every three businesses adopting UPI/eWallets though transaction volumes are low. This indicates the penetration of UPI/ eWallets goes beyond the larger cities and there is definitely a demand for merchant transactions in the smaller cities too which is driving businesses to adopt such services for their customers.

    Kantar executive vice president, insights division  Biswapriya Bhattacharjee stated, “UPI/eWallet and digital transaction has become almost a necessity in this pandemic-hit world. Indian businesses have started adopting UPI/ eWallets in a big way in recent times, having thrown into the deep end of the pool. Covid-19 is the worst of crises that our generation has witnessed and with no notes to refer to, Indian business entities are resorting to technology adoption, in order to stay afloat. Our idea of financial transaction has always been cash and that thought process has been very deep-rooted in our minds. We have seen the first round of adoption of digital payments post demonetisation. However, Covid-19 crisis has accelerated technology adoption amongst the urban businesses and digital payment receipts is at the core of this shift. Our data indicate that about a third of the urban businesses have started exploring the possibility of adopting digital payments for their business since the lockdown. We believe that this shift amongst businesses is here to stay as businesses realize the ease with which they can do their business, especially, in the urban cities.”

    ITOPSTM is an annual syndicated study of Kantar to determine the penetration, usage and profile of technology and digital products amongst Micro & Small businesses in Urban India. Launched in 1996, the study is in its 24th year. ITOPS 2019 covered about 7000+ businesses across 35 cities and urban locations.

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  • Indian bus counters to go cashless with Paytm

    Indian bus counters to go cashless with Paytm

    MUMBAI: India’s largest mobile payment and commerce platform, Paytm, has enabled cashless payments in what was so far a cash-only sector, unreserved bus tickets. Ticket counter staff can now bid goodbye to the hassles of dealing with loose change and the delays associated with it.

    Travellers can now pay at inter-city bus counters with their Paytm wallets.

    With this step, Paytm has opened up the gates of convenience and commuting ease. The ticket booking process is faster, more efficient and hassle-free now. Paytm users can simply scan the Paytm QR Code and send the exact amount to book their bus tickets. The entire process is now digitized with records of transactions in a jiffy at zero transaction fee.

    Paytm VP Kiran Vasireddy said, “With this use case, Paytm has achieved a breakthrough in bringing digital payments to the unreserved bus ticketing sector. This is only a sneak peek into how the convenience of Mobile Wallets can revolutionise the transport sector. Going forward, we will enable the Paytm Wallet at various state owned as well as private operators to drive our vision of making payments cashless across India.”

    Currently bus counters operated by state transport undertakings (STUs) like Uttarakhand and Rajasthan accept Paytm. The company is actively working to forge partnerships with other state-owned and private bus operators and bring them on-board. This move is an important step in the vision of making cashless transactions a way of life across all consumer segments and demographic profiles in India.

  • Indian bus counters to go cashless with Paytm

    Indian bus counters to go cashless with Paytm

    MUMBAI: India’s largest mobile payment and commerce platform, Paytm, has enabled cashless payments in what was so far a cash-only sector, unreserved bus tickets. Ticket counter staff can now bid goodbye to the hassles of dealing with loose change and the delays associated with it.

    Travellers can now pay at inter-city bus counters with their Paytm wallets.

    With this step, Paytm has opened up the gates of convenience and commuting ease. The ticket booking process is faster, more efficient and hassle-free now. Paytm users can simply scan the Paytm QR Code and send the exact amount to book their bus tickets. The entire process is now digitized with records of transactions in a jiffy at zero transaction fee.

    Paytm VP Kiran Vasireddy said, “With this use case, Paytm has achieved a breakthrough in bringing digital payments to the unreserved bus ticketing sector. This is only a sneak peek into how the convenience of Mobile Wallets can revolutionise the transport sector. Going forward, we will enable the Paytm Wallet at various state owned as well as private operators to drive our vision of making payments cashless across India.”

    Currently bus counters operated by state transport undertakings (STUs) like Uttarakhand and Rajasthan accept Paytm. The company is actively working to forge partnerships with other state-owned and private bus operators and bring them on-board. This move is an important step in the vision of making cashless transactions a way of life across all consumer segments and demographic profiles in India.