It seriously made me (and a lot of others as well) wonder as to why FreeCharge doesn’t have its own wallet system as of now ! And the wondering part was even more prolonged, considering FreeCharge undoubtedly has the best recharging interface and experience, not just in India, but perhaps across the globe.
The wait however, is finally over, as FreeCharge has today announced its own wallet platform, named ‘FreeCharge Wallet’. And as mentioned by the Snapdeal-owned brand, they have done a lot of research and hence took time to bring out this product.
With the launch of FreeCharge Wallet, Snapdeal co-founder Kunal Bahl tweeted,
Launching
#FreeChargeWallet! We will simplify digital payments in India like never before.
While the company hasn’t divulged much details about the Wallet, FreeCharge is claiming a massively speedy, ’10 seconds’ checkout through its new wallet system. You can store money into the wallet, and then later use it for purchases on FreeCharge later.
Do note though, that Freecharge already has something called ‘FreeCharge Credits’, which stored failed transaction money as credits to be used in later recharges. The wallet is principally a more refined form of the credits system, with user now getting an option to store money as well.
Freecharge founder Kunal Shah also divulged some staggering stats for the world (and ofcourse their competitors) to look upon. The new combined entity i.e. FreeCharge+Snapdeal have together amassed a massive 87 Million users on their platform. Combined, these two have stored card details for over 15 Million customers with a whopping 2300 transactions happening every second.
Two out of every three customers end up transacting on either of these platform. 86% of total freecharge users and an impressive 75% of all Snapdeal users transact using their mobile phones, while both of these have together clocked a mind-boggling $4Billion in GMV.
At the launch event in Bangalore today, Snapdeal’s chief product officer, Anand Chandrasekaran, said this was the “toughest product” they had built so far.
Getting 87 million people to upgrade to a single account is no child’s play,
he added
Freecharge says that the digital wallet can be expected to roll-out in a few weeks, though no specific timeframe has been given.
Updated with more info.
