Cash no longer king, e-shoppers prefer card payment

March 28, 2015

Mumbai, Mar 27: A majority of Indians who make online purchases prefer making payments through credit or debit cards rather than cash-on-delivery or online banking modes, says a survey by financial services firm Visa.

"About 74 per cent of the respondents preferred using payment cards -- credit, debit and prepaid -- to pay for their online purchases, while only 51 per cent used cash-on-delivery, followed by 47 per cent who used net banking," the survey said.

e-shoppersOnline shopping saw significant growth in 2014, with 92 per cent of Indians having bought products from virtual stores, making an average of 25 buys, it said.

The use of payment cards is a noteworthy shift from cash, which has historically been the preferred medium for payment, it added.

The findings were based on a survey of 806 Internet users who access the web at least once a week and are aged between 18 and 55. Of the people surveyed, 75 per cent were from tier I cities and the rest from tier II towns.

"E-commerce is thriving in the country with Visa spend data showing 33 per cent growth in e-commerce payment volume in 2014. We are also seeing 49 per cent growth in the number of e-commerce transactions, which is consistent with our research findings," Visa Group Country Manager (India and South Asia) T R Ramachandran said.

The top three reasons for shopping online are convenience (82 per cent), price (78 pc), and enjoyment (76 pc).

The study showed that Indians spend five hours online each day, slightly greater than the daily average of four and a half hours across Asia Pacific.

The top three categories for online purchases in the country emerging from the survey were – fashion (51 per cent), online bill payments (50 pc) and movie tickets (47 pc).

Personal electronics and computer equipment are the other leading online shopping categories, it said.

The findings also highlighted how online shopping habits vary, depending on the device used. "Indians are among the most active online shoppers using their mobile phones with 66 per cent browsing shopping websites and 46 per cent actually making purchases," it said.

Desktops and laptops continue to be the most preferred option for online shopping with a 92 per cent to 87 per cent conversion rate between browsing and purchasing online, respectively.

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Agencies
June 10,2020

US dictionary Merriam-Webster will update the meaning of the word "racism" after being contacted by a Missouri black woman, who claimed the current definition fell short of including the systematic oppression of people of colour, according to media reports.

"A revision to the entry for racism is now being drafted to be added to the dictionary soon, and we are also planning to revise the entries of other words that are related to racism or have racial connotations," according to a statement of the 189-year-old dictionary shared by Kennedy Mitchum, a recent graduate of Drake University in Iowa, on her Facebook.

Mitchum, 22, emailed the dictionary last month, following the death of African American George Floyd in the custody of four Minneapolis police officers, Xinhua news agency reported.

"I kept having to tell them that definition is not representative of what is actually happening in the world," Mitchum told CNN. "The way that racism occurs in real life is not just prejudice, it's the systemic racism that is happening for a lot of black Americans."

Merriam-Webster's first definition of racism is "a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race."

"It's not just disliking someone because of their race," Mitchum wrote in a Facebook post on Friday. "This current fight we are in is evidence of that, lives are at stake because of the systems of oppression that go hand-in-hand with racism."

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Agencies
January 12,2020

Washington D.C., Jan 12: A recent study has claimed that people end up wasting almost an entire day when they take a vacation.

This can happen while standing in a queue or searching for places to visit, people do not keep a count of the time they have actually utilised during the trip. As a result, they end up doing much lesser activities than they originally had planned.

According to a recent report in Fox News, the study has also shared the fact that people try to justify time waste with planning and scheduling activities whereas the truth is that these things can be done well ahead to save time during the trip.

The average time waste according to the study commissioned by Sykes Holiday Cottages also said the people taking a seven days' trip waste a minimum of 17-and-a-half hours to figure out various factors.

But there are other causes involved as well. When one visits any crowded location, the real-time spent to enjoy the location is lesser than the time spent on reaching and trying to get involved. For instance, if one visits an amusement park, the activities take lesser time than the preparatory and other phases.

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Agencies
June 24,2020

New Delhi, Jun 24: The Centre has made it mandatory for sellers to enter the 'Country of Origin' while registering all new products on government e-marketplace (GeM).

The e-marketplace is a special purpose vehicle (SPV) under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry which facilitates the entry of small local sellers in public procurement, while implementing 'Make in India' and MSE Purchase Preference Policies of the Centre.

Accordingly, the ministry said the move has been made to promote 'Make in India' and 'Atma Nirbhar Bharat'.

The provision has been enabled via the introduction of new features on GeM.

Besides the registration process, the new feature also reminds sellers who have already uploaded their products, to disclose their products' 'Country of Origin' details.

The ministry further said that failing to disclose the detail will lead to removal of the products from the e-marketplace.

"GeM has taken this significant step to promote 'Make in India' and 'Aatmanirbhar Bharat'," the ministry said in a statement.

"GeM has also enabled a provision for indication of the percentage of local content in products. With this new feature, now, the 'Country of Origin' as well as the local content percentage are visible in the marketplace for all items. More importantly, the 'Make in India' filter has now been enabled on the portal. Buyers can choose to buy only those products that meet the minimum 50 per cent local content criteria."

In case of bids, the ministry said that buyers can now reserve any bid for a "Class I Local suppliers. For those bids below Rs 200 crore, only Class I and Class II Local Suppliers are eligible to bid, with Class I supplier getting purchase preference".

In addition to this, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has reportedly called for a meeting with all e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart to display the country of origin on the products sold on their platform, as well as the extent of value added in India.

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