Explore Business Standard
Private sector lender Axis Bank on Wednesday said government mandates on the payments space ensure that no one can make money in the segment. The bank's chief executive and managing director Amitabh Chaudhry feared that smaller entities will not be able to survive amid such diktats. The comments from Axis Bank, which also runs the payments company Freecharge, come amid a debate on whether merchant discount rate (MDR) should be levied on the very popular UPI platform. The government, which wants to popularise digital payments, has been insisting that no charges should be levied. "What the government is doing is that they're taking out the entire P&L (profit and loss) opportunity for us. So if you look at the payments space, no one can make any money in the country at all. You have to use payments as a platform to make money somewhere else," Chaudhry said at the Global Fintech Fest here. The worry is that more and more of such demands will emerge, which will take away revenue and ...
Just two days after taking over as the CEO of digital payments firm Freecharge, Jason Kothari has elevated Ankit Khanna to the position of Chief Operating Officer, as he looks to turnaround the failing fortunes of a company that has failed to keep pace with rival Paytm.Khanna, a Snapdeal veteran who joined the e-commerce company back in 2010 served as the Chief Product Officer of Freecharge prior to being promoted. The top management rejig at Freecharge comes after Govind Rajan quit the company from the position of CEO in February."We are proud to announce Ankit's elevation as the COO of FreeCharge," said Kothari. "He (Khanna) has also helped build highly complex and scalable products encompassing various aspects of e-commerce and digital payments ecosystem and helped build a frictionless user experience."Apart from serving as COO, Khanna will also handle the portfolio of Product, User Growth, User Experience and Business Development at Freecharge.Freecharge is currently seen as ...