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Sebi will soon take action against some market operators and senior staff members of about a dozen listed blue-chip firms for their alleged involvement in leak of price-sensitive information through WhatsApp . The companies may also face censure action by the market watchdog for alleged lapses in safeguard mechanism to check leak of unpublished price sensitive information (UPSI), including financial results before they were made public for all investors, regulatory sources said. The regulator is close to completing its probe into the matter, including for suspected unlawful gains through insider trading on the basis of leaked information, and is collating the details it had sought from all concerned companies, the officials said. Almost all the companies have replied to Sebi 's queries in this regard. According to top officials, the regulator is taking a tough stand on the companies that fail to fix individual responsibility for any leak of price-sensitive informa...

Facebook is set to offer its WhatsApp payment services to the whole of India as early as next week in an attempt to win market share, even though its partners aren’t all ready, said people familiar with the matter. The messaging app will partner HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and Axis Bank to process the transfers, and State Bank of India will join once it has the necessary systems in place, the people said. Facebook was aiming for a full rollout with four partners but decided to go ahead with just three as its rivals were racing ahead, the people said, asking not to be named as the information isn’t public. The entry of Whatsapp into India’s payments space has been likened to WeChat, which reshaped payments in China when it expanded beyond messaging. The pilot version of WhatsApp Pay — started with 1 million users in February — received rave reviews, threatening the market share of incumbents Google Tez and Alibaba-backed Paytm, which lack the benefits of a social network. “ Wha...

Axis Bank Share India’s third largest private sector bank Axis Bank on Tuesday said it would soon be able to process payments over the popular chatting application ‘WhatsApp’. The bank also termed the Unified Payment Interface (UPI) as a “huge opportunity”. “ We are the market leaders in terms of innovation, and we do believe that UPI is a huge opportunity. We are working in terms of creating a differentiated environment for our customers,” Axis Bank Executive Director -Retail Banking, Rajiv Anand said. Click Here To know More – Axis Share Price 

Global ratings agency Moody's on Thursday said private lender Axis Bank 's asset quality may deteriorate further and more than what was previously expected over the next 12-18 months. In addition, compared to the other rated Indian banks, the bank has been a laggard in recognising its asset quality problems, a credit negative for its credit quality, Moody's said in its statement. Axis Bank's asset quality deteriorated significantly in the September quarter. On October 17, Axis Bank reported a 24 per cent quarter-on-quarter increase in non-performing loans (NPL) in the quarter that ended September 2017. The gross NPL ratio increased to 5.9 per cent at end of September 2017, from five per cent in the quarter ended June 2017. It is higher than expectations and a credit negative for the bank. ALSO READ: Axis Bank Q2 net jumps 36% to Rs 432 cr but bad loans rise

Private sector lender Axis Bank has reduced interest rate on savings bank accounts by 50 basis points to 3.5 per cent for deposits up to Rs 50 lakh. However, the bank will continue to pay four per cent interest on deposits of above Rs 50 lakh. The new interest rates will be effective from August 8, Axis Bank said in its filing with the BSE. Axis Bank’s action follows the decision by State Bank of India (SBI) and Bank of Baroda to reduce rates on savings deposits. SBI was the first bank to cut the savings deposit rate by 50 basis points to 3.5 per cent for deposits up to Rs 1 crore. Bank of Baroda had cut the rate to 3.5 per cent on deposits of up to Rs 50 lakh. While Kotak Mahindra Bank retained the existing rates of five per cent on savings deposits up to Rs 1 lakh and 6 per cent on deposits between Rs 1 lakh and Rs 1 crore, it reduced the rate on savings deposits of amounts above Rs 1 crore and up to Rs 5 crore from six per cent to 5.5 per cent. The interest rate on deposi...

Private sector Axis Bank has planned a capital raise of up to Rs 35,000 crore in about a year's time in line with its growth projection in domestic as well as overseas operations. In its annual report for 2016-17, Axis Bank said it may need to raise additional funds in one or more tranches from Indian as well as overseas markets to maintain its capital to risk weighted assets ratio (CRAR). The country's third largest private sector lender said it may issue debt securities denominated in Indian rupees or any other permitted foreign currency including long term bonds, green bonds, non-convertible debentures on a private placement basis during the period of one year from the date of passing of the special resolution. The board of directors at its meeting held on April 26, 2017 had approved the fund raise plan. Axis Bank said the planned money raise is "for an amount not exceeding Rs 35,000 crore on a private placement basis during a period of one year fr...

Financial News : Axis Bank, the country’s third largest private sector lender, is looking to expand the scale of its digital transactions . Such transactions currently make up 70 per cent of the bank’s overall transactions compared to branch banking which accounts for only 12 per cent. “ Our intent is to increase the volume of digital transactions. People are getting used to it and it is on us how we intensify the digital operations. At present, digital transactions contribute around 70 per cent to our total transactions and we see lot of opportunities in this space driven by Aadhar-enabled payments and mobile app based banking”, said Sidharth Rath, group executive (corporate relationship group and transaction banking). Mobile banking transactions of Axis Bank surged 140 per cent while internet banking moved up 36 per cent in last fiscal, largely due to demonetisation that significantly suck cash out of the system. “ All our customers are digitally enabled. Digital tran...

The government on Monday asked  State Bank of India (SBI) to reconsider its decision to levy penalty on non-maintenance of minimum balance, which the bank plans to hike manifold from April 1 impacting over 310 million savings bank account holders. SBI, according to a source, has also been asked to reconsider charges it proposes to levy on cashtransactions and ATM withdrawals over specified limits. The country’s largest lender has announced imposing penalty ranging from Rs 20-100 on non-maintenance of minimum average balance (MAB) in savings bank accounts from April 1. The penalty is as high as Rs 500 in case of current accounts. The penalty for breach of MAB is being reintroduced after a gap of five years. The bank has also increased the minimum balance requirement by many times, which is as high as Rs 5,000 for account maintained with branches in six metro cities.  Read More

Banks , including HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and Axis Bank, from March 1 started imposing a minimum charge of Rs 150 per transaction for cash deposits and withdrawals beyond four free transactions in a month. The new charges would apply to savings as well as salary accounts. The bank would also cap the third party cash transactions at Rs 25,000 per day, while cash handling charges would be withdrawn. You can read about then details of this move here:  Banks to levy Rs 150 after 4 cash transactions Business Standard did a quick poll on Twitter yesterday and the results show how unpopular this move is  We asked: Are banks justified in charging customers for cash transactions in their own accounts? Out of 575 responses, 78 per cent replied in the negative while 22 per cent supported the banks' move.   Read more