Reliance makes final call for payment on rights issue, BFSI News, ET BFSI

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Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has a second and final payment from those who were issued 42.26 crore company shares in a rights issue. And to assist shareholders, it has re-activated WhatsApp Chatbot 7977111111.

In a regulatory filing, the company said a notice for payment of Second and Final Call on 42,26,26,894 partly paid-up equity shares of the face value of Rs 10 each issued and allotted on rights basis on May 15, 2020, has been issued.

Reliance had made a Rights Issue of 42.26 crore equity shares at Rs 1,257 each. The final call of 50 per cent of the amount – Rs 628.50 per share – has now become due.

Reliance’s rights issue at a total size of Rs 53,125 crore was the largest ever rights issue in India. This was the world’s largest rights issue by a non-financial company in the last 10 years.

The existing shareholders of the company were offered new shares of the company in a 1:15 ratio.

November 10, 2021, was the record date to decide holders of the Reliance Partly Paid-up shares, who need to pay the Second and Final Call.

On payment of the Second and Final Call amount, the partly paid-up shares will transition into fully paid-up shares of Reliance Industries, which are traded under symbol RELIANCE on both NSE and BSE.

To assist investors on the issue, Reliance has re-activated WhatsApp Chatbot.

The AI-enabled easy-to-use Chatbot is developed by Jio‘s group company Haptik and was previously used at the time of Rights Issue in May 2020, and the First call in May 2021.

Reliance in the notice said the Second and Final Call can be paid through online ASBA, Physical ASBA, 3-in-1 account, R-WAP facility (enabled for Net-banking, UPI, NEFT and RTGS payments) and payments through cheque/demand draft.

Payment of the Second and Final Call can be made from November 15 to November 29, 2021 (both days inclusive).

The credit of the fully paid-up equity shares on payment of the Second and Final Call is expected to take place within two weeks from the last date for payment mentioned in the Final Call Notice i.e. within two weeks from November 29, 2021. PTI ANZ BAL BAL



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Mukesh Ambani’s $50 phone can unleash a credit revolution across the globe, BFSI News, ET BFSI

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A smartphone widely believed to be priced below $50, likely the world’s cheapest, will start selling a week from now. If Mukesh Ambani’s JioPhone Next, an Android device custom-built for India by Alphabet Inc.’s Google, is a hit in the price-conscious market, it will solve one problem for banks while posing another.

With the country’s remaining 300 million feature-phone users going online, there will be a surge of customer data that can stand in for collateral. The question is, how will banks get their hands on it?

An answer has come from iSPIRT, a small band of policy influencers quietly setting up technology standards for India’s digital markets, inducing firms to enter new, open-network markets from online payments to healthcare.

The Bangalore-based group is championing a fresh set of players — account aggregators — to unlock a much sought-after prize: Bringing into the folds of formal credit the 80% of adults in developing countries (40% in rich nations) who don’t borrow money from traditional institutions.

But these people and their micro enterprises are increasingly online thanks to innovations like JioPhone Next. They’re paying rents, rates and utility bills and receiving payments on their smartphones, scattering their footprints all over the internet. Account aggregators will gather those digital crumbs for people to share their own data in a machine-readable format for a bank loan application.

Introducing a layer of consent managers is important. Emerging-market borrowers can have many types of accounts-based relationships. Yet they can be useless to banks if they can’t present a composite picture of their financial lives to access formal loans that get monitored by credit bureaus. More than three-fifths of India’s adult population is either invisible to credit scorers or not considered worth the trouble by standard lending institutions.

In an advanced economy like the U.S., services such as Experian Boost and LenddoScore help narrow the subprime borrowers’ visibility gap by getting them to voluntarily submit their utility or video-streaming bills to demonstrate creditworthiness. But in an emerging market with low financial literacy, banks would rather leave the bottom of the pyramid to lenders who know the borrower in real life or have some social leverage on her — such as micro-finance firms that lend to groups of women.

Conversely, tech platforms, intimately aware of their customers’ online behavior, can match them with loans, collecting fees while leaving risks with the banks. Jack Ma’s Ant Group Co. cornered nearly a fifth of China’s short-term consumer debt before Beijing broke up the game.

Not every country can afford to bring out the heavy artillery against its private sector: Politics wouldn’t allow it. Aggregators can be a much softer tool for keeping the lending market fair, giving banks a reasonable economic chance to compete with data-rich tech giants.

Take JioPhone Next. It will spew out data about a large segment of sparsely banked population. Jio, Ambani’s 4G telecom network, will capture some of it as subscribers of its cheap data plans buy groceries from JioMart, an online partnership with neighborhood stores across India. Google will also get valuable data about users’ location and search queries. Facebook Inc. will exploit its own knowledge, as the social media giant adds to its half-a-billion-strong Indian customer base for WhatsApp and a growing craze for Instagram Reels, a video-sharing platform. Unsurprisingly then, Google wants to influence India’s deposit market, and Facebook is nibbling into the small business loans pie.

When it comes to real-time data, banks can never match the platforms’ clout. But account aggregators’ snapshots can help them catch a break.

Just enough additional data that will tell them if a customer is more creditworthy than suggested by a low (or no) credit score can make a big difference to profit, especially as banks won’t have to pay hefty fees to the likes of Jio, Google or Facebook for their proprietary assessments. By owning and explicitly sharing their data, customers will avoid getting trapped in the tech industry’s biased algorithms. Tiny enterprises will be able to show their cash flows to lenders by pooling everything from tax payments to customer receipts. Once telecom firms come on board, an affordable “buy-now-pay-later” plan on a refrigerator purchase will become possible for a low-income family that pays its phone bills regularly .

Aggregation, being a utility, will be like tap water to platforms’ Evian, and be priced accordingly. Who will own the pipes? Walmart Inc.’s PhonePe, which runs India’s most popular digital wallet, has received an in-principle approval to be an aggregator from the central bank. Eight banks, which between them account for 48% of all accounts in the country, have agreed to use the framework, which went live Thursday.

It’s a good start. Banks desperately need some help to stay in the money game. Or they’ll just go crying to regulators and ask them for special protections against Big Tech. That would hurt experimentation and delay the credit revolution that $50 phones can unleash.



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RBI enhances maximum balance limit for payments banks to Rs 2 lakh, BFSI News, ET BFSI

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The Reserve Bank of India with a view to strengthen financial inclusion has enhanced maximum balance limit for payments banks.

Currently the limit on maximum end of day balance of Rs 1 lakh per individual has been increased to Rs 2 lakh from immediate effect.

The RBI said, “Based on a review of performance of payments banks and with a view to encourage their efforts for financial inclusion and to expand their ability to cater to the needs of their customers, including MSMEs, small traders and merchants, it has been decided to enhance the limit of maximum balance at end of the day from ₹1 lakh to ₹2 lakh per individual customer.”

RBI will soon issue a separate circular on the same.

ETBFSI had earlier reported that Payments banks had previously demanded to increase the deposit limit to Rs 5 lakh as major challenge for the payments banks was that there we no major takers as the limit of Rs 1 lakh was really low and merchants and customers didn’t wanted to go ahead to a bank with limitations.

The business model of payments banks have been a tough one to crack as the central bank didn’t allow them to offer credit nor accept higher deposits.

In 2015, In 2015, RBI granted a license to 11 Payment Banks. These 11 banks included Aditya Birla Nuvo, Airtel Payments Bank, Cholamandalam, India Post Payments Bank (IPPB), Fino Payments Bank, National Securities Depository Limited, (NSDL), Jio Payments Bank, Sun Pharma group by Dilip Singhvi, Paytm Payments Bank, Tech Mahindra, and Vodafone M-Pesa.

3 out of 11 payments banks — Cholamandalam, Tech Mahindra, and Sun Pharma had surrendered their license before even starting a business. After a successful launch and operating in the space, Aditya Birla Payments Bank also surrendered its license.

Currently, Fino Payments Bank, Paytm Payments Bank, India Post Payments Bank, Airtel Payments Bank, Jio Payments Bank are actively operating in this space.

Also Read: Payments Banks want RBI to increase the deposit limit to Rs 5 lakh



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Reliance partners Google, Facebook in seeking NUE licence from RBI, BFSI News, ET BFSI

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Mumbai: Reliance has partnered Google and Facebook to set up a New Umbrella Entity (NUE) that will allow them to create a payment network similar to the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) to gain a share of India’s burgeoning digital payments market. The NUE will be jointly promoted by an RIL unit and Infibeam Avenue subsidiary So Hum Bharat. Facebook and Google will hold smaller stakes. The companies are in advanced stages of submitting their proposal to the RBI, three people with knowledge of the matter told ET.

Deadline extended to March 31

Former Itzcash founder and payment industry veteran Navin Surya has been appointed MD and chief executive, said the people cited above. Reliance, Google and Facebook didn’t respond to queries. “We are bound by the confidentiality of the process and cannot comment,” an Infibeam Avenues spokesperson said. “A proposal will be presented to the Reserve Bank of India on detailing the consortium’s plan to strengthen India’s digital economy,” said one of the people with knowledge of the matter. “Representatives of these companies have been in talks with the central bank over the past few months to ensure compliance ahead of the formal presentation of the bid.”

The RBI is expected to take another six months to study the proposal along with other bids. RBI said Friday that the deadline to submit applications had been extended to March 31, following a plea by the Indian Banks’ Association. ET had reported on February 19 that the regulator may consider extending the deadline, keeping in mind Covid-related disruptions.



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