Confirming earlier reports which hinted towards introduction of a mobile wallet by Micromax, the company has now made the same official, by introducing its mobile wallet service on Tuesday. India’s largest smartphone manufacturer has partnered with mobile payments company TranServ to equip all future Micromax devices with the service.
The new wallet, as is the case with most these days, will allow users to do both online and offline transactions. While you will obviously be able to pay bills and do ecommerce, the mobile wallet will also allow you to split bills with your friends, send gift/gift cards or do other, similar social transactions.
Apart from this mobile wallet, Micromax will also provide its users with physical prepaid cards that will give its customers access to over 1.1 million Visa-enabled merchants across the country.
All of Micromax’s upcoming devices will come equipped with the mobile wallet. It will allow users to add cash via all regular means — credit/debit cards, net banking etc. and will also give users an option to add cash via official Micromax stores.
In a statement to Mint, Vikas Jain, co-founder, Micromax says,
We want users to enjoy a seamless and delightful experience across categories like hospitality, travel, healthcare, entertainment, e-commerce or payments, where we populate the gaps to map their digital journey to their fulfilled world. The growth in mobile payments has a lot to do with the ease of payment and tight integration with popular services.
Ambitiously, with introduction of its mobile wallet, the home grown smartphone maker is targeting to spread its reach among 10% Indians (~120 Million).
India, undoubtedly, could easily be world’s biggest market for any company looking to enter the mobile payments space. This is largely because of the numbers India sports. The subcontinent has close to 800 Million mobile subscribers with a whopping 200 Million or something using smartphones — and that number is increasing at a phenomenal pace on a daily basis.
Initially, Micromax will provide services in travel (local cabs, flights, hotels), food and shopping, and will add more categories later. Earlier, Yu — the smartphone manufacturing subsidiary owned by Micromax, also introduced a whole new suite of software services, which will come installed on all Yu phones going ahead.
For Micromax, which enjoys popularity among the affordable buying category and also because of its home-grown company tag, this could be yet another avenue where it has got a headstart, ahead of its Chinese and Indian competitors. In fact mobile wallet isn’t just it. This strategic partnership with TranServ, which Micromax might also invest in, will also see the roll-out of more digital financial solutions such as micro-loans and other personal financial services.
