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CCAvenue has launched ‘CCAvenue Finance’, a financial assistance program that connects their web merchants and CCAvenue Checkout consumers using their payment gateway platform with trusted lenders in the industry to help them secure easy loans.

To kick-start the ‘CCAvenue Finance’ initiative, CCAvenue has partnered with ‘Lendingkart’ to provide loans with a vision to enable every entrepreneur fulfill their business aspirations.

“CCAvenue has more than 1 lakh merchants on board and while working closely with them, we realized the issues they have been facing while raising capital to fuel growth in their businesses. At CCAvenue, our efforts have always been focused on helping our merchants scale up their business to the next level and ‘CCAvenue Finance’ goes a step further in strengthening this. With this initiative, SMEs and startups on our platform gain quick access to loans within minimum turn-around-time, with basic documentation and zero collaterals, thereby simplifying the entire capital fund gathering process,” said, Vishwas Patel, Chief Executive Officer, Avenues Group.

The eligibility criteria for merchants to avail this service will be clearly defined by the company along with the funding partners and customized financing options will be offered to them based on their business category and requirement, he added.

In addition to offering ‘Merchant Finance’, CCAvenue will soon be launching ‘Consumer Finance’ for CCAvenue Checkout customers. With this initiative, CCAvenue Checkout customers can apply for short term loans and within a couple of hours, the sanctioned loan amount will be available to them in their Checkout accounts. With the pre-sanctioned loan, CCAvenue Checkout customers will be able to get ready access to funds and complete transactions for online purchases in a jiffy by avoiding the hassle of the conventional multi-layered payment process.

Ride hailing app- Ola, on Wednesday announced a five Day camp starting March 18 at Gurgaon- Ola Pragati Mahotsav, where it is inviting driver partners across Delhi NCR to come and avail benefits of up to Rs 150000 on exchange of existing Diesel vehicles for new CNG vehicles.

Ola has also offered to pay off first two EMIs for those who go for new CNG vehicles.

Ola, will also invest Rs 200 crore over the next six months to expand the fleet of CNG cars on its platform with over 5000 cabs in the Delhi-NCR region.

The Delhi High Court had on Tuesday directed Ola, Uber and the radio taxis’ association to give details, including registration numbers, of those cabs which they intend to phase out by March 31 as per the Supreme Court’s order.

In the meanwhile, Ola has tied up with car manufacturers like Hyundai, Nissan, Maruti, Chevrolet, etc and financial institutions including State Bank of India, IDBI, Shri Ram Finance amongst others to provide financial assistance and promote CNG vehicles.

“Driver partners can also benefit of free CNG Kits, free Car Insurance, free Vehicle Registration and a lot more at Ola Pragati Mahotsav. This is yet another initiative by Ola to promote adoption of CNG vehicles and encourage entrepreneurship amongst the cab driver community in Delhi NCR,” the statement said.

Times Internet announced that Satyan Gajwani, formerly CEO, will become Managing Director of Times Internet, and Gautam Sinha, formerly COO, would become CEO of Times Internet.

Vineet Jain, MD of Bennett Coleman and Company Limited, will also continue to serve as Chairman of Times Internet. The new appointments come into effect in April.

As a technologist and business leader, Gautam has more than 28 years of global experience in technology companies, and will bring his capabilities in execution to the new role.

For the past 8 years, Gautam has served as Chief Technology Officer and Chief Operating Officer. Before Times Internet, Gautam was a Silicon valley entrepreneur and executive.

On his appointment, Gautam Sinha said, “Digital news, entertainment, classifieds, and commerce are rapidly shaping the Indian consumer’s habits, and I am delighted to have the opportunity to spearhead an industry leader, with over 150 million highly engaged monthly users. Leading such a diverse portfolio in today’s dynamic environment is a mammoth task. Satyan has done a fantastic job creating a solid cultural foundation, vision and team, and I’m excited to continue to work alongside Satyan to deliver world class products and experiences.”

Mobile commerce platform FreeCharge has introduced a new feature called ‘Chat and Pay’, which will enable Person-to-Person (P2P) and Person-to-Merchant (P2M) interfaces for Digital Payments.

FreeCharge says the service will help customers to chat and pay in a secure way to friends, family and merchants in less than 5 seconds. It will also enable merchants to accept digital payments in less than 1 minute after registering on the FreeCharge App.

Announcing the launch of the service, Govind Rajan, Chief Operating Officer, FreeCharge said “Our ambition at Freecharge is to create a Payment OS for a Digital India. Today, we have taken a bold step in achieving this goal. Payments are often social; they are in fact a very human interaction. Chat N Pay brings this human emotion to payments, making them deeply engaging. We are confident Chat N Pay will accelerate the adoption of digital payments”.

He further added that ‘Chat and Pay’  will make digital payments ubiquitous in the offline space. Merchants, Govind said, can start accepting digital payments by just downloading the app at Zero investment.

‘Chat and Pay’ will be available on Android and will be available on iOS and Windows over the next few weeks.

RJD Chief and former Chief Minister of Bihar, Lalu Prasad Yadav, has fallen prey to cyber criminals, after his Facebook page was hacked and the cyber criminals also posted some offensive and obscene pictures on the page.

Deputy CM and Lalu’s son Tejaswi Yadav filed a police complaint with the secretariat police station and Police has already alerted its cyber team. In the meanwhile cyber security cell has closed his old account and a new Facebook account has been opened.

Just days after announcing their plans to launch its own digital wallet services in a bid to make its presence in the payments space , Amazon India has applied for a semi-closed wallet licence with the RBI. The license has been filed under Amazon Online Distribution Services (AODS), a subsidiary of Amazon Asia Pacific Resources.

Amazon is getting into the wallet segment for the first time by starting it in India, showing signs of prospering wallet industry in India. They are the one of the last entrants in this space as against their competitors.

As per RBI, a semi-closed wallet can be used to buy goods and services, including financial services, at clearly identified merchant locations or establishments, which have a specific contract with the issuer to accept the payment instruments.

If approved, Amazon will obtain licence and launch the wallet by middle of 2016. This effectively will place it parallel to current wallet players such as Paytm, Citrus pay and Flipkart money, who function on the semi-closed wallet system too.

Amidst ongoing squabble between private e-commerce companies and state tax departments, the Allahabad high court bench, comprising Justice Tarun Agarwal and Justice VK Mishra, has imposed a fine of Rs 2 lakh on the Uttar Pradesh commercial tax department for wrongly attaching a bank account of Flipkart in a purported attempt at tax recovery.

The department had allegedly also withdrawn Rs 49.8 crore from the company’s account “without any authority of law”.

“The court gets an uncanny feeling that a deliberate attempt was made by the respondents to withdraw money from the petitioner’s bank account through dubious means, by passing ex-parte assessment orders and not allowing it to be served validly on the petitioner,” the court said.

The court, in its order, has directed the tax department to refund the amount to Flipkart along with interest.

The court condemned the act and observed that if the department continued to function in such a manner,  companies would find it difficult to operate in the state.

According to the petition, the commercial tax department had not issued any summons to Flipkart with regard to non-payment of funds. Though the company had shifted its office from Noida to Ghaziabad in 2013, tax department officials kept affixing notices on its old office building despite knowing that the address had changed.