IBA Banking Technology Conference and Awards Ceremony 2018 was organised at Hotel Trident, Nariman Point, Mumbai on 23^rd February, 2018 and was inaugurated by R Gandhi, Former Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank of India.

Inaugural session

Welcoming the keynote speaker, other dignitaries and delegates to the Conference, Usha Ananathsubramanian, Chairman, IBA and MD & CEO, Allahabad Bank informed that BHARAT QR Code application which started as an application supporting debit and credit cards, now supports UPI also in its Version 4. Excerpts from her welcome address: Thirty banks have already rolled-out Bharat QR Version 4 and an awareness campaign is being planned once all the banks are ready with this version. Transactions under UPI application have grown exponentially in the last few months and have crossed 150 million in Jan 2018 alone. BHIMAadhaar application , which requires only a smart phone with a bio-metric device attached, was launched by the Prime Minister on 14th April 2017. With the availability of UPI, BHARAT QR, BHIMAadhaar banks have started focussing on digital POS’s and onboarding of merchants in smaller towns and villages. The government of India has set a an ambitious and challenging target of 25 billion digital transactions for the financial year 2017-18. The number of digital transactions was 1.06 billion in Dec 17 and 1.12 billion in Jan 18.  With the prospect of payment banks becoming more active and more vendors entering payments business like social media entities, it will be no wonder if the monthly transactions cross 2 billion soon. As far as banking technology is concerned, India is considered as a developed country and a leader in the world.

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