BENGALURU: In the aftermath of demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes and the push towards virtual payments discouraging cash on delivery, mobile payments and commerce platforms have seen an exponential growth in less than 24 hours.
Mobile wallet Paytm has seen a 200 per cent increase in app downloads, a 1,000 per cent rise in the money added, a 435 per cent increase in traffic and a 250 per cent spike in overall transactions. The number of saved cards grew by 30 per cent. “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 to taking black money out of the equation and provide a major boost to the economy,” said Madhur Deora, CEO, Paytm.
Another digital payment platform, MobiKwik witnessed an over 40 per cent increase in app downloads within 18 hours of the announcement to pull out notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denominations.
“With this policy change, we expect a 10X impact. We expect to easily hit $10 billion in payment volume by 2017. Indian users do $1 trillion worth of payments annually, of which more than 90 per cent is in cash. We were earlier trending to process $1 billion payments by 2017,” said Upasana Taku, co-founder, MobiKwik. She added that Wednesday was a landmark for the digital payments industry which is now poised to become one of the largest contributors to the economy, driving a cashless revolution. MobiKwik has over 1,00,000 merchants on its platform including Big Bazaar, Big Basket, Grofers, Ezone, Dominos, Croma, Pantaloons, Star Bazaar, Oyo Rooms, MakeMyTrip, Swiggy, FoodPanda and ZopNow.
A spokesperson of Bengaluru-based online fresh food-at-your desk delivery portal, Freshmenu, said, “As a business, it makes more sense for us to have everything done online and payments made virtually. Online payments are safe and convenient but we cannot enforce anything. It’s customer convenience which is most important for us.” The spokesperson added that because of products of lower denomination on the menu, the Cash on Delivery option has not been removed.