Can JioMoney wallet make deep Inroads? Should Paytm be worried? -- TECHNOLOGY HANDLER

Reliance Jio is the fastest-growing technology company not only in India but also in the world, said Reliance Industries' Chairman Mukesh Ambani in his speech on Thursday. With Jio crossing 50 million customers in 83 days, the company is growing faster than Facebook, WhatsApp or Skype, asserts Ambani.

Happy New Year offer was the highlight of Ambani's speech on Thursday which will allow the existing and new Reliance Jio users to be able to use data, voice, video and all of Jio's applications for free until March 31, 2017.

The other significant step that Ambani announced is the wallet offering for small merchants which will launch on December 5. During this period, Jio customers will also be able to go for digital payment and test-drive billing experience using JioMoney wallet app. The merchant wallet will enable digital transactions of all types --be at mandis, small shops, restaurants, railway ticket counters, bus and mass transit and even for person-to-person money transfers.

After being successful in making a mark in the telecom sector with the launch of Relaince Jio 4G network, Ambani now seems to be moving onto the e-walletindustry as the nation struggles to go cashless.

Can JioMoney, its merchant ecosystem make a mark?
Jio is working to empower Indian merchants by building a digital retail ecosystem, while empowering the consumers to make digital transaction through e-wallet. "Thanks to solutions like JioMoney, every Indian has the ability to have a digital ATM in their pocket," said Ambani.

The company is focused on signing up over 10 million small merchant retailers in the coming weeks across 17,000 towns and four lakh villages. This speaks volumes on how Ambani is upbeat about his next digital India move.

The Reliance chairman also tried to pitch in the government’s much-debated demonetisation move by saying the step would help boost the country’s economy. ‘The JioMoney merchant ecosystem will be an enthusiastic partner for the smooth implementation of Prime Minister's game-changing vision of creating a digitally-enabled and strong Indian economy,’ Ambani reiterated in his speech.

Having said, Ambani did not seem to position JioMoney as just a mobile wallet, but rather as ATMs. "Customers can use this to pay the merchant from their bank accounts, and merchants can use this to accept the payments directly into their bank accounts." This seems to be a greater scheme than it actually looks. If it succeeds to add to the regular value propositions of a wallet, the cashless service from the Reliance Industries may succeed to make deep inroads into neighborhoods.

Should the likes of Paytm be worried?
Paytm, which is currently at the help of affairs when it comes to digital wallets in the country, says they have seen a huge response from India’s smaller cities and towns. ‘Kirana store owners, vegetable and fruit vendors, food stalls, pharmacies and many more merchants across India now accept Paytm,’ says the company.

With one million merchant base and an offline presence in over 40 cities across India, Paytm is currently at the top most used wallets in India.

Their latest move to make the Paytm Android app available in 10 regional languages has proved to be a great success, is what the company think.

The Paytm merchant network grew to one millionth offline merchant. It just took less than three months to double up the merchant base. Keeping the momentum going, the wallet company is working hard to make the entire neighbourhood shops part of the cashless economy.

With one millionth merchant base and an offline presence in more than 40 cities across India, Paytm is currently at the top most used wallets in India. And of course, there are others as well in the fray including MobiKwik which claims to have registered two million downloads within 48 hours of the lunch of its ‘Lite’ version of the wallet app.

Now that Reliance is making a digitisation move on the back of an obvious thought-through strategy, it only remains to be seen how the story unfolds given that Paytm has grown multi-fold post-demonetisation making inroads into remote areas and unseen hyper-local stores while Jio has a better platform to connect and of course funds. 

                                                                   source: techradar