Seven Mobile Wallets Every Indian Should Know About

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Today, most people you know are probably using a smartphone, and mobile wallets have also become quite widespread, even if most people use them for a very specific reason. For some, a mobile wallet is just a way to recharge their phone; for others, it's the app they use to refill the taxi money; and a few people have even started using these to buy a drink at Cafe Coffee Day.

There are dozens of branded wallet solutions on offer today, global and Indian, from tech companies, telecom players, and banks. With mobile Point of Sale service providers like Ezetap enabling mobile wallet payments, the usability of the wallet is no longer limited to sellers that have tied up with a particular wallet provider.

The era of cashless payments is upon us. Its WhatsApp moment in India is somewhat validated by the rise of Paytm, one of the largest funded players in this space, claimed a 100 million strong user base in August, from 12 million users in November 2014. The momentum in this sector can be underlined by the following stats from Tracxn, a market intelligence platform for private market investing: over 250 financial-tech startups were founded in 2013 and 2014, and the last 1.5 years have seen them raise $1.5 billion in funding.

On a global perspective, mobile wallets are enabling economies to transition to a cashless society. The major tech giants all have solutions of their own – there's Apple PayGoogle Wallet, and Samsung Pay, to name a few. Despite this, there's not much compatibility between the wallets – if you use Ola cabs, orOla Store for your groceries, then you need to have an Ola Money wallet, and you can't top it up with your Paytm balance.

So, do you need to have all the different wallets installed on your phone, or can you manage with just a few of them? We took stock of the different options, and these were the ones that really caught our eye.

 

Source: NDTV Gadgets (link opens in a new window)

Categories
Technology
Tags
digital payments, telecommunications