Mobikwik Provides Cashless Option with Mobile Wallet in India

The assault on cash in India will continue through a new wallet offering from Mobikwik.

With the backing of the Reserve Bank of India, the Gurgaon, Haryana-based online bill payment provider has developed a mobile wallet that will allow consumers to make one-click purchases from Android or iOS devices.

Mobikwik Mobile Wallet users will be able to make shop at nearly 500 merchant locations, as well as add mobile phone minutes, pay utility bills or purchase movie tickets, Mobikwik CEO Bipin Singh states this week in a press release.

Reserve Bank of India has licensed the company to allow customers to withdraw money from their bank accounts to load into the wallet, Mobikwik says. In addition, customers can link the wallet account to a credit card.

Mobikwik plans to also add cash as a top-up option, with collection agents coming to homes to collect the money, Singh says.

A MasterCard report this week indicated that, India lags among countries turning away from cash as a payments staple. India was listed as having only 32% penetration on cashless payments options, compared to 90% in Canada and 80% in the U.S.

Mobikwik aims to go up against the likes of Movida, a joint venture of Visa and Monitise, which announced two months ago it would offer a mobile payment service to consumers in India through ICICI Bank. At that time, Visa estimated that 90% of payments in India were made through cash.

Even though cash remains in favor in India, various companies have the same goal in mind as Mobikwik.

This year, Mumbai power distributor Reliance Infrastructure established the first mobile and Web-based option for residents to pay utility bills, while Payvia plans to expand e-commerce services through Mobile-XL into India.

In addition, Flipkart continues its push to provide cash options with its PayZippy gateway software. PayZippy enables card acceptance from websites and mobile sites of Indian merchants.