UPI transaction value to quadruple by FY23
An Indian court has summoned Alibaba and its founder Jack Ma in a case in which a former employee in India says he was wrongfully fired after objecting to what he saw as censorship and fake news on company apps, documents seen by Reuters showed.
The case comes weeks after India cited security concerns in banning Alibaba’s UC News, UC Browser and 57 other Chinese apps after the border clashes.
Following the ban India sought written answers from all affected companies, including whether they censored content or acted for any foreign government.
In court filings dated July 20, the former employee of Alibaba’s UC Web, Pushpandra Singh Parmar, alleges the company used to censor content seen as unfavourable to China and its apps UC Browser and UC News showcased false news “to cause social and political turmoil”.
Civil judge Sonia Sheokand of a district court in Gurgaon, NCR, has issued summons to Ali-baba, Jack Ma and about a dozen individuals or company units, asking them to appear in court or through a lawyer on July 29, court documents showed.
The judge has also sought written responses from the company and its executives within 30 days.
UC India said in a statement it had been “unwavering
in its commitment to the India market and the welfare of its local employees, and its policies are in compliance with local laws. We are unable to comment on ongoing litigation.”
Alibaba representatives did not respond to requests for comment.
Parmar, who worked as an associate director at the UC Web office in Gurugram until October
2017 and is seeking
$268,000 in damages, referred Reuters queries to his lawyer, Atul Ahlawat, who declined to comment.
Before the apps were banned, the UC Browser had been downloaded at least 689 million times in India, while UC News had
79.8 million downloads, most during 2017 and 2018, data from analytics firm Sensor Tower showed.
In more than 200 pages of court filings, Parmar included clippings of some posts showcased on the UC News app that he alleged were false. One post from
2017 was headlined in Hindi: “2,000-rupee notes to be banned from midnight today”. Another headline of a 2018 post said: “Just now: War broke out between India and Pakistan.”
Covid-19 will provide additional impetus to contactless payments and see UPI transactions growing four-fold to Rs 87 lakh crore by FY23.
The payment industry will enter a new phase after Covid-19, as the pandemic has significantly changed the way consumers and businesses interact. Covid-19 has upended life globally and heralded a new normal across sectors-one that is low touch and highly digital in nature, finds a report by the Payments Council of India (PCI) and PwC.
The report estimates that India will grow exponentially in the post-Covid era and grab a 2.2 per cent share of the global payment market by 2023. UPI, which has broken all records in the Indian payments industry, will be mainly instrumental in this growth story. Unified Payments Interface has clocked 12.5 billion transactions, amounting to Rs
21 lakh crore in FY20, having grown at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 785 per cent in volume and 570 per cent in terms of value between
FY17 and FY20. Peer-topeer payments have been the major contributors of UPI volumes.
Based on PricewaterhouseCoopers' s internal analysis and forecast, the volume of the UPI product would reach nearly 59 billion by 2023 due to its high P2P type of transaction penetration. This will see transaction value quadrupling to Rs 87 lakh crore.
Similarly, Bharat Bill Payment System, which is meant for utility payments, will grow from 145 million transactions in
FY20 to touch 569 million transactions by FY23. A
436 per cent CAGR will see transaction value growing from Rs 21,000 crore to Rs
94,000 crore by FY23. Aadhar-Enabled Payment Systems will see a growth from 254 million transactions to 2.4 billion transactions. The transaction value will cross Rs 7 lakh crore by FY23.
The National Electronic Toll Collection too will grow to 2.1 billion transactions. However, RuPay cards may see a modest growth by FY23, as the volumes and value might dip in FY21 due to Covid crisis.