Business
Guardrails in place for AI-led commerce: Visa – The Times of India
SINGAPORE: Payments giant Visa is looking to launch agentic commerce pilots across the Asia-Pacific region as regulatory and ecosystem readiness advances by early next year. Agentic commerce refers to a new era where AI-powered agents shop and pay on behalf of users. The company’s Visa Intelligent Commerce (VIC) programme incorporates features like tokenisation, authentication, payment instructions, and transaction signals. As far as India is concerned, VIC will be launched once regulatory approvals are in place. “If you take the combination of tokenisation and RBI’s new authentication circular, the enabling regulatory environment is right for agentic commerce. We will have discussions. I want to have my team go and demo it to RBI, and we want to make sure we do it in a responsible manner with all the due regulatory approvals in place,” Visa’s head of products and solutions (Asia-Pacific) T R Ramachandran said during the Singapore Fintech Festival here last week.“The pace of e-commerce and quick commerce, year-on-year growth in India has been staggering. The growth is no longer restricted to cities like Mumbai, Gurgaon, Kolkata, Chennai and Hyderabad. Amazon tells us that they have 6,000 pin codes from which they get shopping orders, which is huge. The rapid growth of LLMs (large language models) will only accelerate online shopping. As far as agentic commerce is concerned, we are not letting somebody run amok without guardrails or without controls or without constraints,” he said.When it comes to detecting fraud, Ramachandran said that Visa has been securing the ecosystem with AI-driven risk services for banks and fintechs in India. It has implemented AI-led ‘visa advanced authorisation’ and ‘visa risk manager’ across most banking partners and fintechs, strengthening real-time fraud detection and ecosystem resilience.(The writer was in Singapore at the invitation of Visa)
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Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority mandates OTP or e-sign authentication for National Pension System online registration.
News18
The Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority) has tightened the process for paperless onboarding under the National Pension System (National Pension System), making OTP- or e-sign-based authentication mandatory at the final stage of online registration.
In a circular dated January 2, 2026, the regulator asked all Central Recordkeeping Agencies (CRAs), Points of Presence (POPs), and other NPS stakeholders to align their systems with the updated requirements.
What has changed
The new circular partially modifies the earlier June 2020 guidelines that allowed paperless NPS account opening using either e-sign or OTP. While both modes remain valid, the regulator has now clarified that authentication through e-sign or OTP received on the applicant’s registered mobile number is compulsory to complete the online registration journey.
Importantly, subscriber consent and all mandatory declarations must now be explicitly obtained at the end of the digital onboarding process through the same authentication method.
Why the Move Matters
The clarification aims to strengthen the integrity of digital onboarding and ensure that subscriber consent is clearly recorded. By mandating authentication at the final stage, the regulator seeks to reduce disputes, improve audit trails, and enhance subscriber protection in a fully paperless environment.
The move also aligns NPS onboarding with broader trends in digital financial services, where OTP and e-sign authentication have become standard practice.
What CRAs and POPs Must Do
The regulator has directed CRAs and POPs to update their IT systems, workflows, and subscriber journeys in line with the revised norms. This includes ensuring that online forms cannot be submitted without successful OTP or e-sign verification.
The circular has been issued under powers granted by Section 14 of the PFRDA Act, 2013, making compliance mandatory for all stakeholders.
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January 05, 2026, 16:13 IST
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The price of gold in Pakistan saw one of the biggest surges ever in both global and Pakistani markets on Monday.
According to the All Pakistan Sarafa Gems and Jewellers Association (APSGJA), the price of 24-karat gold increased by a massive Rs9,200 per tola, reaching Rs464,762, as global rates rose amid steady investor demand.
The price of 10 grams of gold also climbed by Rs7,888 to Rs398,452, according to the APSGJA.
The price of 10g of 22-karat gold increased by Rs7,231 to reach Rs365,266.
In the international market, gold prices increased by $92 per ounce to settle at $4,424. The uptick reflects sustained global interest in precious metals amid economic uncertainty and shifting currency trends.
Silver followed a similar trajectory, with the price per tola of 24-karat silver rising by Rs267 to Rs8,023. The price of 10 grammes of 24k silver hiked by Rs229 to be sold for Rs6,878.
Supermarket Aldi has revealed a £1.65 billion sales haul over the Christmas month as price remained the “biggest priority” for shoppers.
The group reported a 3% rise in total sales over the four weeks to Christmas Eve as it notched up a record 57 million transactions.
The German-owned discounter – Britain’s fourth biggest grocery chain – said sales jumped by more than 5% in the final trading week leading up to Christmas, with around £500 million rung up through its tills.
The performance for the month-long run-up marks a slight slowdown on the previous Christmas, when sales lifted 3.4%.
Last week, close rival Lidl reported a 10% rise in Christmas sales as it made more than £1.1 billion in turnover over the four weeks leading up to December 24, but the two discounters do not provide same-store comparable sales for the period.
Aldi said price was “the biggest priority for shoppers in 2025, with customers seeking ways to celebrate on a budget”.
Despite this, customers traded up to its premium own-brand range, Specially Selected, which saw sales rise by over 12%.
Giles Hurley, chief executive of Aldi UK and Ireland, said: “This Christmas proved once again that a great quality Christmas can still be affordable.
“We’re grateful that more people than ever chose Aldi for their Christmas shop and trusted us to deliver both quality and value during what remains a challenging time for many.”
Aldi said Tuesday December 22 was its busiest trading day over the festive period.
There was strong demand for key festive British-sourced meat and vegetables, with customers buying 56 million potatoes, 37 million carrots and half a million turkeys.
The group also sold more than 5.5 million bottles of sparkling wine over the festive period.
The German discounters have kicked off the festive reporting season from the supermarket sector, with Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Marks & Spencer to follow later this week.
In September, Aldi announced a further £1.6 billion of investment to accelerate its UK supermarket expansion, with 80 openings planned over the next two years.
The chain, which currently has around 1,060 stores, has previously said it is targeting 1,500 locations across the UK.
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