Paytm Has Just Created Millions Of PoS Across India With A Single Move; Every Paytm User Can Now Accept Card Based Payments

Paytm Has Just Created Millions Of PoS Across India With A Single Move; Every Paytm User Can Now Accept Card Based Payments Paytm has just created millions of Point of Sales (PoS) across the nation, with one strategic move. Now, anyone with a merchant account with Paytm can receive payments via debit card/ credit card, which means that digital payments have been super-simplified and scaled beyond imagination. This is certainly one of the masterstrokes by Paytm for encouraging even more digital transactions and a good move towards an absolute cashless economy. Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma said, “India needs a very innovating mobile pos machine and Paytm has already been accepted by many merchants. By extending our merchant network to all other payment networks, we are enabling digital payments to a very large number of Indians.” How Will It Work? Suppose you visit a local grocery shop to purchase few items and the shop-keeper has a Paytm account. Now, there can be two scenarios: Either you also have a Paytm account, which means that you can simply transfer the amount. Or, you don’t have a Paytm account, but have debit/credit card to make the payment. In this case, the merchant can accept your debit/credit card via his Paytm app, and complete the payment. This is how it will work: Step 1: The merchant raises the bill, and gives you his phone wherein you enter your debit/credit card number Step 2: The customer receives an OTP on his mobile number Step 3: Enter the OTP inside merchant’s Paytm app Step 4: Payment complete Till December 31, there would be no fees for such card based transactions on merchant’s Paytm app. The new version of the app has been updated, and under ‘Accept Payment’ tab, merchants can receive payments from cards issued by Rupay, Visa, MasterCard and Maestro. Big Boost For Cashless Economy There are around 150 million users of Paytm, and almost 1.5 million merchants registered with the. With one single step, these 1.5 million merchants can now accept debit and credit based payments, thereby transforming into a live PoS, instantly. Besides, RBI has recently increased the limit for merchants to Rs 50,000 per month, which means that they can send upto Rs 50,000 from Paytm app to the bank, without KYC. This, along with PoS transformation means that merchants would now prefer Paytm mode of accepting payments (both from credit/debit card or peer-to-peer money transfer). Merchants can register with Paytm by visiting here. Paytm is expecting atleast 10-15 million more merchant accounts after this decision to convert apps into PoS. We will keep you updated as more details come in. courtesy of ; TRAK

LinkedIn Signs MoU with HRD ministry, Makes it Easier for Students to Find Jobs

LinkedIn Signs MoU with HRD ministry, Makes it Easier for Students to Find Jobs

LinkedIn has been trying to make an impression in the Indian job industry with a slew of services like the Placements and Starter Pack. The Indian job market is not very straight forward, and competing companies like Naukri.com and Timesjobs already have a strong user base.

To take on such services, LinkedIn has signed a Memorandum of Understanding(MoU) with the Human Resource Development Ministry to create and market more job opportunities for students across India.

LinkedIn has its own Jobs portal where companies and recruiters can post their company openings. Job seekers can also directly apply through their LinkedIn profiles, making it easier for the seekers and cutting down time on creating CVs.

Millions of students graduate every year, and number of jobs available in the market are relatively low. Also, a lot of students get misguided after graduation and pursue something they are not fit for, due to shortage of opportunities. Through this MoU, the Placements product will be adopted by all Indian colleges affiliated with All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).

Akshay Kothari, Head of Product – LinkedIn India, said “Our objective with Placements is to help India’s best talent get access to job opportunities, regardless of their location. With this partnership, we are excited to see our vision quickly become a reality.”

LinkedIn Placements provides an equal opportunity to all students, regardless of their location or college, through an online assessment test, which gives them access to thousands of openings in 35 top corporates in the country. This test is standardized across campuses and does not have any conditions and filters.

The service has already received a lot of interest from students and job seekers, with 1.2 million job applications in less than 2 months. Placements also makes it a tad easier for fresh graduates to apply to dream companies, that were out of reach earlier.

Will AICTE be able to help students?

The main issue with colleges in India is infrastructure and adherence to guidelines. AICTE might direct all the affiliated colleges to start this Placements service immediately, but the infrastructure and the processes will make it painfully long for students.

Especially right now, when the market is at its high, providing this opportunity to students will make it extremely competitive and beneficial for the companies. However, a lot of colleges lack proper conditions to allow their students to even take the test.

Another issue is the quality of education. The top colleges in India have better quality of education, giving them an advantage over the lesser known colleges. In the end, the more educated the student, the easier it is to get placed in these top companies.

The best solution would be to combine Placements with Khan Academy or Coursera to allow students to prepare and compete with everyone around India. This will ensure everyone is at par for an exam that is the same across different colleges.

courtesy of: trak

Airtel Might Offer Cheaper Voice Calls In Future, But Not Free

Airtel Might Offer Cheaper Voice Calls In Future, But Not Free Posted: 03 Nov 2016 07:57 AM PDT India’s leading telecom operator- Airtel has rubbished the possibilities of offering free voice calls for lifetime even though the new entrant, Reliance Jio is aiming to capture market share with its free voice offering. Airtel Might Offer Cheaper Voice Calls but not free unlike Reliance Jio It is worth noting that, as of now the telecom operators get about 80% of their revenue from voice, so moving to free voice business models might not be so easy for the incumbents. Reliance Jio on the other hand, is banking on the revenue generated from its data packs for sustenance and market penetration, as data has higher profitability than voice. Gopal Vittal, MD & CEO, India and South Asia, Bharti Airtel, mentioned the telecom sector as “brutally competitive market” and said that the competitors kept Airtel at it toes, but it never got “obsessed” with them. Since Jio is a new entrant into the immensely competitive telecom market, it is bound to have ‘market penetration’ as its pricing strategy which will erode the margin of the incumbents. “If the question is are you going to see price erosion…I think given that you have a new entrant on the horizon, yes, you will see some price erosion. Because that is the game new entrant will play,” said Vittal. Jio is offering free voice and data to its subscribers under its ‘Welcome Offer’, valid till 31 December 2016, for those who get a Jio SIM before 3 December. Post that, the users would still be able to make free voice calls for life as long as they are subscribed to any of the Jio’s tariff plans. It is worth noting that as a result of this free data offering, Jio’s average data speed has dropped considerably. Airtel is also offering unlimited voice calls on its Infinity pack priced at Rs. 999 but it is not offering it for free. A telecom operator needs to make money from one way or the other. If it is making good amount of money from one offering then it can offer the other at a reduced rate or may be for free. “There will be a large number of customers who are on basic feature phones and low end smartphones who will want to buy services differently. They will want to de-couple voice and data. Equally, there will be a set of market where they will want (it) bundled…If a guy is not paying for data at all, he will pay for something,” Vittal added. Airtel also made it clear that it will not be offering standalone free voice plans. “If you are only buying voice, how will one do that?” Vittal explained. It doesn’t come as a surprise to us as offering very affordable free voice plans won’t make sense for any telecom operator. Jio might be able to pull it off, by the economies of scale and with a huge base of loyal customers subscribed to monthly packs starting from Rs. 149 and above. As we earlier reported, Airtel is also upgrading its LTE network to VoLTE, so we can expect to see VoLTE voice packs priced very competitively, but certainly not for free.