Bloomberg India’s war on cash has at least two likely victors: Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. The world’s largest payment networks will see a surge in transactions and cardholders after the Indian government’s decision this month to remove high-denomination bills from circulation, according to analysts who cover the companies. The two networks have been pushing for this kind of ...

  New Delhi / AFP Huge bank queues have become an ubiquitous sight across India after the government suddenly withdrew the two highest denomination notes from circulation two weeks ago — but now you can hire-a-queuer online. New Delhi-based startup BookMyChotu — a play on the Hindi word “chotu” meaning “little one” — is cashing in on the cash crunch, ...

  Bloomberg The local unit of HSBC Holdings Plc is advising Saudi Arabia’s Public Pension Agency on the sale of its struggling financial hub to the country’s sovereign wealth fund, according to people familiar with the matter. The Public Investment Fund is offering to acquire the Riyadh district for less than the pension fund’s 30 billion riyals ($8 billion) investment, ...

  Bloomberg Goldman Sachs Group Inc. raised its oil-price forecast for early next year, while Russia, Iran and Iraq separately signaled optimism that producer nations will be able to reach a deal to limit output at OPEC’s next meeting on Nov. 30. Goldman is now “tactically bullish” on the likelihood of an OPEC agreement and expects oil prices in New ...

  Barcelona / AFP Barcelona’s leftwing city council charged three Spanish banks over a million euros in fines for keeping four apartments empty for more than two years. The city issued a fine of 315,000 euros ($335,000) for each of the empty apartments, which the banks have had on their books for over two years, and which they have refused ...

FRANKFURT / AP Volkswagen’s namesake brand hopes to bounce back from its diesel emissions scandal with a broad restructuring that will mean more battery-powered cars, digital services such as ride-sharing, and more SUVs for the U.S. market. Herbert Diess, the head of the Volkswagen division, unveiled the company’s Transform 2025 plan at a news conference, saying that “in the coming ...

  San Francisco / AP Facebook has built a tool for geographically censoring posts at the leading social network as it seeks a path back into China, The New York Times has reported. The New York Times cited three current and former Facebook employees, who asked for anonymity, as saying that the tool could filter news feeds at the social ...

  San Francisco / AP An industry-backed autonomous car lobbying group has urged US regulators to go further to remove speed bumps than what was laid out in guidelines published two months ago. In a letter to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a ‘Self-Driving Coalition’ founded early this year by Google, Ford, Volvo, Uber and Lyft hailed the framework ...

  Faye Flam Bloomberg Blind faith in any technology can be dangerous — especially when it comes to areas of forensic science such as DNA fingerprinting. For example, if police have “DNA evidence” against a suspect, most juries will assume that’s proof of guilt. But while the technology for analyzing DNA has become vastly more sensitive since it was first ...

  Hochheim am Main / AFP For 15-year-old Mustafa, the trickiest part about learning German is knowing when to use the articles der, die or das. “And the umlaut,” his classmate Majd reminds him, sending both Syrian teens groaning in mock frustration at the vowel alteration, one of the quirks of German grammar. But they’re not really complaining. Having escaped ...