Brands
Isobar white paper champions headless commerce as the future for brands
MUMBAI: Isobar, the global digital marketing agency from the house of Dentsu Aegis Network, has recently launched a white paper which elaborates on how ‘headlesscommerce’, an approach to technology architecture, is more important than ever before.
The report, titled ‘Headless Commerce : Differentiating your approach To experience commerce strategy’, shares how headless commerce is an opportunity for brands. It argues that the reconfiguration of legacy systems can support the functional, emotional and tangible needs of a customer experience. It also explains how the headless commerce approach provides brands with greater control over the UX, giving them a consistent identity across an entire ecosystem of touchpoints and a foundation to create long-term customer relationships that can deliver sustainable business growth.
Isobar Global chief technology officer Vikalp Tandon said, “One of the biggest challenges in the experience economy for brands is to engage consumers at every touchpoint across an ecosystem. This goes beyond serving the right content at the right time. It originates in the brand’s technology infrastructure that powers their digital presence. The headlesscommerce approach allows brands to deliver a truly customer-centric experience at speed and scale which is key in today’s landscape and is needed to move forward.”
Isobar India EVP and head Isobar Commerce, India Shekhar Mhaskar added “In this day and age, the consumer demands and desires a seamless, homogenous and uninterrupted experience that is agnostic of devices and media channels. And this is even more imperative in the realm of online commerce. Headless commerce, as a practice, helps to solve all the above, continuously and at speed. It also empowers the brands to simultaneously innovate and improve on two important fronts front-end customer experience and back-end technology.”
The white paper provides C-Suite brand leaders an overview of:
· The context behind the emergence of unified commerce experiences
· The opportunities of the headless commerce architecture approach
· A Customer Experience Framework
· The limitations of conventional or legacy architecture approaches (Monolithic architecture)
· The opportunity for immersive experiences through rich content approaches
· How headless commerce provides brands with a centralised view of customer data
· The requirements of a headless commerce strategy and what the future holds
Brands
Reserve Bank of India cancels Paytm Payments Bank licence
Central bank cites compliance failures; curbs tighten as wind-up looms
MUMBAI: India’s banking watchdog delivered its sharpest blow yet to Paytm Payments Bank, cancelling its licence and effectively ending its ability to operate as a bank under the law.
The Reserve Bank of India said the entity can no longer conduct banking business under the Banking Regulation Act, citing concerns that its affairs were not being run in the interest of depositors or the public and that it had failed to meet licence conditions.
The move escalates a crackdown that has been building for months. The bank had already been barred from onboarding new customers since March 11, 2022, and later faced restrictions on deposits, credit and wallet top-ups. In January 2024, the central bank ordered it to stop accepting fresh deposits, pointing to persistent non-compliance, including lapses in customer due diligence, use of funds and technology systems.
Operationally, the bank is now on a tight leash. It may process withdrawals of existing deposits and facilitate loan referrals through banking correspondents, but it cannot take fresh deposits.
The central bank said it would apply to the high court to wind up the bank.
Paytm sought to ringfence the fallout. In a regulatory filing, it said the licence cancellation applies to Paytm Payments Bank Limited, a separate entity, and should not be attributed to One 97 Communications. It added that there is no exposure or material business arrangement with the bank and that it operates independently, without Paytm’s board or management involvement.
“As informed earlier, Paytm (One 97 Communications Limited) and its services, which have been operating without interruption, will continue to operate uninterrupted. These include the Paytm app, Paytm UPI, Paytm Gold and all other services offered by its subsidiaries and associated companies,” the company said.
The distinction may reassure users of the app ecosystem, but the regulator’s verdict is unequivocal. After years of warnings, caps and curbs, the payments bank experiment at Paytm is being shut down—decisively, and with little room left to manoeuvre.
