The online shopping rage has shaken the high-street banks such as SBI, Yes and Axis. Well, a string of banks are planning to launch mobile wallet in India to surpass pre-paid issuers such as MobiKwik and Paytm. These mobile wallet service providers have managed to lure the consumers with their attractive retail offering and easy payment options.
M-wallets that will be electronic saving accounts can be used for shopping using the smartphones or tablets. These M-wallets will help the banks outshine the edge that the pre-paid users are providing. As of now, the banks have been rolling out products such as credit or debit cards, internet banking and others to make the customers familiar with the online transactions.
Though the card spends by the customers increased, the banks were still facing a tough competition with the m-wallets. These breed of service providers had a benefit over the banks. To make it clear, a bank customer using a credit or debit card for an online payment has to enter the details such as the card’s 11 digit number, expiry date and verification value. On the other hand, to an m-wallet user can complete a transaction simply by keying in a single password. This is possible as the bank details of the customers are electronically stored in the m-wallet and multiple layers in a transaction are done with it.
The young and affluent move to mobile wallet in India as the service provides irresistible convenience. The banks hope that their m-wallets will be as convenient as the ones that are provided by Paytm, MobiKwik, Oxigen and Citrus.
Regarding this, Jairam Sridharan, the President and Head Retail Lending and Payments at Axis Bank stated that the growth is dramatic and everyone including banks wants to take part in it. It is not known if this is a passing phase or if it will continue. Eventually, everyone will come up with their own wallet.
As per the RBI data, the m-wallet transactions have increased three-folds to Rs 8,180 crore in the fiscal 2014-15 over the previous year with an increase in the transactions from 106 million to 255 million in that fiscal.
The e-commerce transactions have multiplied as the smartphones have become cheaper and the telcos are competing with one another to sell the affordable internet data plans to the users.
Sources claim that Axis Bank, Yes Bank and SBI are said to launch their respective m-wallets in the coming months. As per the information, the Yes Bank wallet will be accessible on smartphones as well on Facebook.
