Fintech

Fintech Brief — September 30, 2026 Today’s Top Stories 1. Apple Pay lands in India — cards only, no UPI, and the fee fight decides who joins next After nearly a decade of waiting, Apple Pay went live in India on Wednesday with eligible Axis Bank credit cards on the Visa and Mastercard networks as the only supported instruments. The rollout is real but phased: users are reporting they can now add Axis cards to Apple Wallet via the Axis Bank app and verify with Face ID, though confirmed in-store tap payments are still trickling in. What India’s default payment habit won’t get: Apple Pay does not touch UPI, which handles roughly 84% of the country’s digital payment volume — this is a tokenised NFC credit-card play in a market where scan-the-QR-and-pay-from-bank-account is the norm. The launch cast is telling: HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and SBI Card are absent at launch, with negotiations ongoing over Apple’s reported ask of about 20 basis points per transaction — a significant bite out of the roughly 40–50 bps margin in the payments layer. RuPay and American Express don’t work either, and debit cards aren’t supported yet. Why now: regulatory changes permitting biometric authentication for card payments finally accommodated Apple’s Face ID/Touch ID model, and Apple Pay VP Jennifer Bailey says “the pieces came together”. Consumer take: genuinely useful for travellers and premium-card users — but with NPCI having rolled out its own UPI Tap & Pay this month, tap-to-pay is no longer Apple’s differentiator here. The interesting fight isn’t at the terminal; it’s over that 20 bps, which will decide how many Indian banks ever show up. ...

Stock Watch — September 29, 2026 Market Day Summary | Not investment advice Summary as of 8:25 AM IST, Tuesday, September 29, 2026 📊 INDICES Monday (Sep 28) close data; % change = Monday’s session move. Next session opens today, Sep 29. Index Close (Sep 28) Change % Change Nifty 50 22,780.25 -360.25 ↘️ -1.56% Sensex 72,771.72 -1,124.02 ↘️ -1.52% Nifty Bank 54,471.65 -1,108.75 ↘️ -1.99% Nifty FinServ (FinNifty) 24,671.65 -423.20 ↘️ -1.69% Nifty IT 28,086.50 -74.40 ↘️ -0.26% GIFT Nifty (Tue a.m.) 22,834.50 -10 pts vs futures prev close ➡️ flat / muted open Pre-market signal (for Tuesday’s open): Monday delivered the gap-down Friday’s GIFT Nifty hinted at — and then some. Nifty broke the 23,000 line decisively (-1.56%), Bank Nifty fell hardest (-1.99%), and India VIX spiked 12.1% to 13.64. This morning GIFT Nifty sits at 22,834.5 — ~54 pts above Monday’s cash close, a muted-to-flat open signal as the market pauses for breath. The technical map: immediate support 22,650–22,700, below which selling can extend to 22,400; on top, 23,000 is now strong resistance and hard to reclaim. Institutional flows: FIIs sold ₹5,353 cr, DIIs bought ₹5,189 cr Monday. Two sentiment factors flip today: the 3-day bank strike was deferred at the last minute (UFBU–IBA will discuss the 5-day week; branches open Tue–Wed including Sep 30 half-yearly closing) — an overhang off PSU banks — but SC refused to stay the 0.4% UPI MDR, keeping the Oct 15 levy on course. Defend 54,400 on Bank Nifty (Monday’s low 54,437); reclaim of 55,000 would need FPI pause. ...

Fintech Brief — September 29, 2026 Today’s Top Stories 1. Supreme Court won’t stop the UPI fee — but the government must now defend it on affidavit The UPI MDR survives its first court test: a bench of CJI Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V. Mohana on Monday refused an interim stay on the 0.4% merchant charge for UPI payments above ₹2,000, but issued notices to the Centre, RBI and NPCI returnable within four weeks. The October 15 rollout stands. The petition by advocate Anjan Datta challenges the September 14 gazette notification under Section 10A of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act and the September 15 MDR framework — and LiveLaw reports the court wants the government to explain, on affidavit, the basis for ending nearly six years of free UPI. The government’s core defence: MDR affects only ~4% of merchant transactions, is neither a tax nor a government levy, and the money stays within the payments ecosystem — while P2P transfers (37% of volume, 70% of value) and small merchants stay free. The fine print still bites: a flat ₹5 for railways, telecom, insurance, fuel and agri inputs; 0.02% capped at ₹300 for mutual funds, securities and brokers. What the affidavit will have to reckon with: UPI carried 2,451 crore transactions worth ₹29.82 lakh crore in August 2026 alone — scale built on being free — and street resistance is organising, with mobile retailers’ “No UPI Day” set for October 2. Four weeks is the window in which the government’s cost study, if one exists, must surface. ...

Fintech Deep Dive — Monday | September 28, 2026 Last week this column treated Global Fintech Fest follow-through as the story. This week the story has a deadline attached: October 15, the day the UPI MDR framework goes live, is now seventeen days out, and the Sept 21–28 window was when India’s payment ecosystem stopped arguing about whether the fee exists and started building for it. Circular OC-237 turned out to be not a fee but a lookup table — sector, instrument, threshold, mandate-type — and every payment gateway, TPAP, acquirer, broker, and AMC in the country now has to encode it. Meanwhile, two quieter infrastructure stories shipped: NPCI’s BHIM app grew a conversational AI support layer that pointedly cannot touch money, and Upstox imported US equity market access over a broker API instead of building it. The through-line: the rail’s next phase is less about new rails, more about new logic running on the existing ones. ...

Stock Watch — September 28, 2026 Market Day Summary | Not investment advice Summary as of 8:30 AM IST, Monday, September 28, 2026 📊 INDICES Friday (Sep 25) close data; % change = Friday’s session move. Next trading session opens today, Sep 28 — Day 1 of the 3-day bank strike. Index Close (Sep 25) Change % Change Nifty 50 23,140.50 +77.40 ↗️ +0.34% Nifty Bank 55,580.40 +141.90 ↗️ +0.26% Nifty FinServ (FinNifty) 25,094.85 +140.70 ↗️ +0.56% Nifty IT 28,160.90 -47.95 ↘️ -0.17% Sensex 73,895.74 +315.20 ↗️ +0.43% GIFT Nifty (Mon a.m.) 23,105.50 -130.50 pts vs futures prev close ↘️ -0.56% gap-down signal Pre-market signal (for Monday’s open): Friday was a value-buying bounce (+0.34%) that still left the market down for a 7th straight week. This morning GIFT Nifty points to a ~130-point gap-down (≈23,105, -0.56%) as US futures pull back and commodities slide (gold -1.65%, silver -3%). FIIs sold ₹3,694 cr Friday; DIIs absorbed ₹2,838 cr. Technically, 23,000 is the line — Friday’s low was 23,020 and max Put OI sits at the 23,000 strike; a decisive break opens 22,800–22,700. Upside capped by the bearish gap at 23,280–23,350, then 23,500–23,550. PCR improved 0.7 → 0.92 (max Call OI 24,000/23,500), so the options book does allow a rebound toward 23,300–23,400 if 23,000 holds. Bank Nifty must defend 55,300 — holding it targets 55,900–56,200; losing it opens 55,000–54,800. Macro: USD/INR flat at 95.80, WTI crude +1.5% to $93.80. The week’s wildcard is domestic: 3-day bank strike Sep 28–30 begins today, colliding with month-end and the Sep 30 half-yearly closing — expect defensive positioning in PSU banks. ...

Fintech Brief — September 28, 2026 Today’s Top Stories 1. Bank strike called off at the eleventh hour: branches open today, but October 26 still looms The three-day nationwide bank strike scheduled for September 28–30 was deferred late Sunday night after a 9:30 PM meeting between the Indian Banks’ Association and the United Forum of Bank Unions. Per the UFBU’s September 27 circular, the IBA agreed to immediately constitute a high-level committee on the unions’ core demand — declaring all remaining Saturdays holidays for a five-day banking week — which will examine alternatives, consult stakeholders and “work towards a solution while keeping customers’ interests in mind”. Note the word: deferred, not cancelled. The unions’ indefinite strike call from October 26 remains on the table if the demand stays unresolved. The timing was never casual — the strike would have run into September 30, the half-yearly closing that drives reconciliation, provisioning and treasury operations, which is why the government had already advanced central government salaries, wages and September pensions to September 25 as a precaution. For customers: normal branch services today, and a committee report to judge before the next strike deadline. ...

Fintech Deep Dive — Sunday | September 27, 2026 Weekly review edition. The week of September 20–27 was the week India’s financial plumbing got a price. A merchant fee returned to UPI after six free years and traders responded by covering QR codes in black cloth. The National Stock Exchange — the venue that prices everything else — finally got its own market price after a decade’s wait. IRDAI proposed putting a hard price ceiling on insurance distribution, and the market answered within 24 hours by erasing over a third of Policybazaar’s parent. A three-day bank strike starting Monday will test which rails keep money moving when branches go dark. And venture capital, reading the same rule changes, tripled its weekly deployment to $188 million. Here are the week’s five defining stories, and what the consumer should take from each. ...

Fintech Brief — September 27, 2026 Today’s Top Stories 1. The UPI MDR standoff enters its final fortnight: trader ranks split, government promises consumers won’t pay The merchant charge on high-value UPI hits on October 15, and the politics around it are fraying on all sides. The Confederation of All India Traders has categorically denied endorsing a nationwide “No UPI Day” on October 2, calling such reports misleading — even as Chandigarh’s mobile retailers (AIMRA) independently announced their own October 2 protest against the 0.4% fee, and MP traders held one on September 23. Meanwhile Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in an exclusive PTI interview, insisted the MDR is “not a tax, not a cess, not even a surcharge” — collections go to the payments ecosystem, not the Consolidated Fund — and that merchants, not customers, will bear it. The Finance Ministry has separately rejected claims of foreign pressure behind the decision. The carve-out map is now clear: P2P and P2M up to ₹2,000 stay free; above ₹2,000 it’s 0.4% capped at ₹300 (at ₹75,000+); essential thin-margin sectors — railways, telecom, insurance, fuel, agri inputs — pay a flat ₹5; and capital-market payments to brokers, mutual funds and securities go at just 0.02%. On that last slice, NSE chief Ashish Chauhan said there were no government talks on the MDR — “a decision taken by NPCI” — and expects brokers and clients to work it out between themselves. The consumer protection rule exists on paper — the ministry says banks have been told to ensure merchants don’t pass the charge on — but with 18 days to go, nobody has explained how a customer is supposed to detect a quietly inflated bill. ...

Fintech Deep Dive — Saturday | September 26, 2026 Consumer rights week, and this cycle the story is design. The week’s biggest consumer-protection moves target not fraudsters but interfaces and fee plumbing: IRDAI proposed the most sweeping reset of insurance distribution in over a decade — dark patterns out, mis-selling clawbacks in, and a public “Know Your Distributor” registry — while the Centre notified e-commerce rules forcing platforms to disclose their real price history and audit themselves for dark patterns annually. RBI proposed a 60-day debit-hold regime for suspected mule accounts and, crucially, wrote a complaints clause into it. The finance ministry spent the week converting last week’s vague MDR reassurance into a named pledge with a mechanism, and enforcement caught up with the deepfake era of the digital-arrest scam — where the firewall that worked was a bank branch manager. Here is the week in five stories, with the consumer’s stake in each. ...

Fintech Brief — September 26, 2026 Today’s Top Stories 1. Sitharaman calls the UPI MDR “purely professional” as NPCI reveals most merchants won’t pay it Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday rejected the Opposition’s claim that the 0.4% merchant discount rate on UPI payments above ₹2,000 was adopted under external pressure, calling it “absolutely baseless” and describing the decision as a professional one taken jointly by NPCI, payments banks and merchant banks. She stressed the MDR is not a tax, cess or surcharge and the collections will not accrue to the government, and — per her SBI conclave remarks — a dedicated fund for promoting UPI among small merchants will get 5% of total MDR collections. NPCI’s own damage-control math: 75% of India’s 6 crore digital merchants have never recorded a single transaction above ₹2,000, and only about 10% of overall UPI transaction value risks the fee being passed to consumers. A finance-ministry official also indicated the GST Council is likely to consider relief on the 18% GST levied on MDR — a hidden surcharge on the fee itself that merchants will otherwise eat. Meanwhile traders’ associations are calling a “No UPI Day” on October 2, asking members to cover their QR codes — to be clear, UPI will keep working that day; this is a voluntary protest. With 19 days to go before the fee kicks in, the real consumer question stays unanswered: which merchants above the exemption line absorb the charge and which quietly pass it on. ...