Digital wallets becoming popular among consumers, reveals RTI

Consumers are trying out new methods of payments, especially digital wallets. This trend saw transactions by digital wallets grow three times between February and April.

A Right to Information application filed with Reserve Bank of India (RBI) revealed that around 6.7 crore transactions worth Rs 1,196 crore were recorded through digital wallets in April compared with 2.4 crore payments totalling Rs 876 crore in February.

The total number of digital wallets as of April 2015 is 101.86 million. Through digital wallets, people can pay through mobilephones.

Economic Times reported that Paytm spent around Rs 100 crore on advertising its e-wallet services during February-April.

"February was the time when the cricket world cup took place and we first started advertising on television. As a result, we attracted new users. While existing users have become comfortable in making high-value transactions, new users are still experimenting with the product,” Amit Lakhotiya, vice-president at Paytm, told ET.

Meanwhile, investors are attracted to the growth of digital wallets and in past few months, Paytm raised $375 million and MobiKwik got $25 million.

E-wallet companies MobiKwik and PayU told the financial daily that they plan to spend over Rs 100 crore and Rs 60 crore, respectively, on advertising over the next few months to boost digital transactions.

"If we created a wallet for every mobile number that ever used our platform, then MobiKwik would have 100-120 million wallets today," Bipin Preet Singh, founder and CEO of MobiKwik, told ET.

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