Apple shelving UPI shows how foreign giants trip over Indian regulations

It is an oft-repeated, well known story, only the actors keep changing. For more than a year, Facebook-owned instant messaging giant WhatsApp has been looking to foray into India’s thriving digital payments industry but has moved little beyond a beta launch. Now, it is the $1-trillion US tech giant Apple that cannot find it in itself to launch a proprietary payments product using the country’s flagship Unified Payments Interface (UPI), suggest reports.

Apple’s move to shelve its UPI plan comes at a time when Google has placed massive bets on the Indian payments ecosystem, especially with its Google Tez app, recently rebranded to Google Pay, which allows people to pay, collect and request payments using UPI. However, Google isn’t too sure of its own future, either. The company is known to be assessing its plans in India, considering strict data localisation norms.

If the UPI values are rising at a breakneck speed each month – they have eclipsed credit card spends in the country – what could possibly be the reason for the three big giants in India’s digital story remaining largely out of the race? Regulations!

The first of the lot is data localisation as recommended by the Reserve Bank of India. Then there are Justice Srikrishna panel’s draft privacy Bill, guidelines of the health ministry, and even the national e-commerce policy. Data localisation simply means storing specific data related to individuals inside the geographic boundaries of the country. However, to different departments it means different things, and it can get confusing for companies.

For instance, earlier this year, RBI issued its master directions and gave companies six months to move to the country all payments and financial data related to Indian cities. RBI also used the phrase “only in India”, implying none of this data could be taken outside of the country for processing.

India’s payment industry has traditionally depended on giants like Mastercard, Visa and American Express, which brought a plastic money boom to the country. These three companies are known to process data at their master data centres outside India, so setting up new data centres just to satisfy RBI’s conditions did not go down too well with these players.

Source: https://www.business-standard.com/article/technology/apple-shelving-upi-shows-how-foreign-giants-trip-over-indian-regulations-118090600284_1.html

Reliance Jio Announces JioPhone 2 Flash Sale On September 12: Details Here

Reliance Jio today announced a flash sale of JioPhone 2 on September 12. The upcoming JioPhone 2 flash sale will begin at 12:00 pm on Wednesday, September 12, according to the telecom company’s website – jio.com. The upcoming sale will mark the fourth flash sale of JioPhone 2. Mukesh Ambani-run Reliance Jio launched the JioPhone last year and JioPhone 2 is an upgraded version of 4G-enabled device. Reliance Jio had earlier offered JioPhone 2 in a flash sale on September 6, August 30 and 16.

Here are the steps to book JioPhone2 in upcoming flash sale on September 12:

1. One needs to log on to Reliance Jio’s website — jio.com — and select JioPhone2.

2. After that, the user is required to enter his or her pin code and proceed to checkout.

3. The user is required to provide personal details such as name, email ID and mobile number.

4. After this, the user has to select the desired payment option.

5. Once the payment of Rs. 2,999 is made by the user, an order confirmation notification is issued through email or SMS.

Source: https://www.ndtv.com/business/reliance-jio-announces-jiophone-2-flash-sale-on-september-12-details-here-1912599

OnePlus 6T render shows a triple-camera setup and waterdrop notch

Redmi Note 5 Pro Red Edition Next Sale Tomorrow on Flipkart, Xiaomi Mi Store

Xiaomi recently announced the launch of the Red colour variant of the Redmi Note 5 Pro in India. The smartphone went on sale in the country for the first time on Mi.com on Tuesday. Like never before, the most popular Redmi Note 5 Pro took time to go out of stock and wasn’t sold out in mere seconds.

Redmi Note 5 Pro Red Edition: Next Sale Date

The Redmi Note 5 Pro Red colour variant went on sale only on Mi.com on Tuesday at 10 AM. Though Redmi Note 5 Pro is one of the most popular budget Android smartphones in the country currently and the Red colour gives it a truly premium look, the new colour variant took a long time to get sold out.

The Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro boasts a 5.99-inch Full screen display with 1080 x 2160 Full HD+ resolution and an 18:9 aspect ratio. In terms of quality, as we noted in our review, the Redmi Note 5 Pro display impresses with a high 1500:1 contrast ratio and 84% coverage of the NTSC color gamut. Similarly, the Redmi Note 5 Pro is among the most impressive budget Android smartphones out there in the performance department as well. The smartphone is powered by a 14nm octa-core Snapdragon 636 processor clocked at 1.8 GHz with an Adreno 509 GPU. When it comes to memory, consumers can choose from two configurations – 4GB RAM + 64GB storage and 6GB RAM + 64GB storage. The Redmi Note 5 Pro comes with Hybrid Dual-SIM slots, which means you will not be able to add a microSD card slot unless you are fine with using just a single SIM card on the device.

Source: https://www.mysmartprice.com/gear/2018/09/06/redmi-note-5-pro-red-edition-go-sale-tomorrow-flipkart-xiaomi-mi-store-price-features/