Somya is an experienced Product Manager whose expertise in the digital payments domain includes immediate payments, cards, point of sale (POS), mobile wallets, mobile banking and QR code-based payment solutions. As Principal Product Manager at ACI Worldwide, Somya leads the solution strategy and go-to-market for various Real-Time and Digital Payment initiatives within ACI.
Articles by Somya Patnaik
Setting the Scenario, What Is Request to Pay?
Real-time payments are becoming the new normal, and digital transformation is the next step in revolutionizing banking. A key product in this arsenal is Request to Pay, an instant payment that enables a simple, instant and seamless payments experience for both the payer and receiver, unlocking promising benefits for merchants, banks, acquirers and billers.
Why Real-Time Payments and Why Now?
As evidenced by ACI’s most recent Prime Time for Real-Timeglobal payments report, the real-time payments revolution has taken hold around the world. Consider, in just the past year and a half: India’s UPI set a record for monthly transactions with more than 3.5 billion in August 2021 The U.S.
Could COVID-19 Be India’s Cashless Catalyst?
India’s push towards a digital economy has accelerated over the years, with a supportive regulatory environment, home-grown technologies and innovation around digital infrastructure improving “last mile” connectivity to the remote towns and rural areas of the country. While the “Digital India” drive has been consistent, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought out the true value of digitization for businesses and consumers alike. It is a watershed moment and has fast-tracked the pace of digital adoption, particularly for payments, which now plays a critical role in economic recovery.
Digital Payments Overlay Services: Accelerating Real-Time Payments Growth
The global real-time payments landscape is transforming every day, as the world moves toward payments that offer a multitude of digital payment overlay services that drive consumer experience and adoption. But what are digital payment overlay services? They are ancillary services that often ride the real-time payments rails, and can be flexible, nimble drivers of innovation. These digital services – piggy-backing on the standard real-time payments rails – not only add value to core payments, but also bring about convenience and ease of use for all participants in the payments ecosystem.
India’s Unified Payments Interface: Breaking the Billion Barrier
September brought about quite a stir in the Indian payments ecosystem, with three years passing since the launch of UPI (Unified Payments Interface), and the realization that UPI is closing in on a significant milestone: one billion transactions per month. In September 2019, UPI clocked 955 million transactions, amounting to 1.61 trillion rupees (INR), demonstrating the extent to which Indian consumers have exuberantly welcomed real-time payments.
How UPI is Driving India’s Shift from Cash to Digital Payments
The Indian economy has traditionally been heavily dominated by cash, while experiencing low adoption of various online payment systems including National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT), Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) and inter-bank mobile payments. The dominance of cash is evidenced by the ratio of cash withdrawals at ATMs vs debit card usage at Point of Sale (POS)—ATM transaction volume is more than 2x greater than POS.
