RBI grants licence📄, UPI Lite📱, Will find Twitter CEO by 2023: Musk👨🏻‍💻

RBI okays licences for 32 payment aggregators, Paytm goes live with UPI Lite, Will find Twitter CEO by 2023: Musk, Funding Deals and more.

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Feb 16, 2023

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RBI okays licences for 32 payment aggregators including Amazon, Google, Reliance📄

The central bank on Wednesday gave in-principle approval to 32 entities for a payment aggregator (PA) licence, including Pine Labs, Razorpay, Reliance, Google, Zomato, and Worldline.

While the RBI has rejected the PA licence applications of Freecharge, Paytm, PayU, and Tapits Technologies, it has added the licence applications of as many as 18 entities to the “still under process” category. Some big names under this category are PhonePe, Cred, MobiKwik, and Instamojo.

This is the first time RBI has released a list with “current application status” for all payment aggregators, saying it is in the interest of “greater transparency.” The list, the banking regulator said, would be updated every fortnight.

Paytm Payments Bank goes live with UPI Lite📱

Paytm Payments Bank users can make transactions of up to Rs 200 without using a UPI PIN as the company has gone live with UPI Lite.

Launched in September 2022 by Reserve Bank of India governor Shaktikanta Das, UPI Lite aims to make low-value UPI payments faster and simpler.

The UPI Lite is an on-device wallet, or a virtual wallet, which users need to enable and add money from their bank accounts to the wallet.

The balance in the wallet can be used to make payments without the need for a PIN or even an active internet connection.

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Bengaluru-based industrial services platform Venwiz has raised $8.3 million in a Series A round led by Sorin Investments, with participation from previous investors Accel and Nexus Venture Partners.
Mufin Green Finance, an electric vehicle (EV) financing NBFC, raised $7 million in green bonds from Symbiotics Investments.
HRtech platform HireSure.ai has secured $2.5 million in seed funding co- led by YCombinator and Three State Capital, along with round participation from Tribe Capital and Pioneer fund.
Home food tech marketplace startup Cookr has raised $1 million (Rs. 8.25 Crores) pre-seed investment led by angels who work at Microsoft, Amazon, Intel, Titan Company, M2P Fintech’s co-founders, and others.

Funding Deals 💰

Will find Twitter CEO by 2023 end, says Elon Musk👨🏻‍💻

Elon Musk has revealed that he expects to find a CEO for Twitter "probably towards the end of this year."

Musk stated in a video conference at the World Government Summit in Dubai that the most important thing for him is that the platform works, according to New York Post.

"There's work required here to get Twitter to sort of a stable position and to really build the engine of software engineering."

Earlier this month, Musk said that the past three months have been "extremely tough" as he "had to save Twitter from bankruptcy" while also fulfilling his duties at Tesla and SpaceX.