Mobile Wallets register massive growth in app downloads

The announcement of the abolition of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 rupee bank notes has led to a sudden increase in the download of mobile wallets such as Paytm, Freecharge, etc. The expanding ecosystem of these digital wallets is coming to the rescue of consumers as apart from recharging mobiles and paying bills (mobile, electricity, DTH and more), they are able to make payments at nearby mom-and-pop stores who have already registered for these services.

Paytm has already registered a massive growth across India within hours of the announcement with 435 per cent increase in overall traffic for offline transactions on the platform. The company also registered 200 per cent hike in the number of app download.  The number of Saved Cards also grew by 30 per cent, pointing at a strong set of repeat customers the platform has now acquired. The company has noted 1,000 per cent growth in money added to the wallet.

Another independent wallet, MobiKwik has registered 40 per cent growth in app downloads within 18 hours of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes pullout. User traffic and merchant queries went up by 200 per cent among its over 35 million users. Upasana Taku, co-founder, MobiKwik said, "With this policy change, we expect a 10X impact - we expect to easily hit $10 billion in payments volume by 2017. Indian users do a trillion US dollars' worth of payments annually, off which more than 90 per cent are in cash. We were earlier trending to process $1 bln payments by 2017."

Even Freecharge reported a sharp 12X overnight jump in the average wallet balance as consumers loaded up their wallets. Oxigen Wallet also revealed a significant increase in the load money transactions by upto 40-45 per cent during the first half of the day.

Madhur Deora, CFO - Paytm said, "This is the biggest and most ambitious step ever to crack down on black money and fake currency. We stand by the government in its efforts towards taking black money out of the equation and offering a major boost to the Indian economy."