Digital payment platforms record surge in transactions after demonetization

New Delhi: Paytm, MobiKwik and other mobile payment and e-commerce platforms recorded a surge in transactions after the demonetization of Rs500 and Rs1,000 bank notes on Tuesday.

ATMs were shut on Wednesday after the surprise announcement by Prime Minister Narendra Modi that the high-value notes would cease to be legal tender from Tuesday midnight as part of the battle against black money.

“Since Paytm is fast becoming synonymous with all kinds of payments, we are happy to announce we have registered a strong surge in volume (of transactions) on our platform,” said Madhur Deora, chief financial officer of Paytm.

The Paytm platform saw a more than five-fold increase in overall traffic as millions of consumers used their Paytm wallets to transact.

The number of app downloads tripled and there was a 250% surge in overall transactions and transaction value.

The number of saved cards also jumped by 30%, pointing at a strong set of repeat customers the platform has now acquired. The company has also noted an 11-fold growth in money added to the wallet and five-fold increase in transaction value of offline payments.

“With this policy change, we expect a 10x impact; we expect to easily hit $10 billion in payments volume by 2017. Indian users do a trillion US dollars’ worth of payments annually, of which more than 90% are in cash. We were earlier trending to process $1 billion payments by 2017,” said MobiKwik co-founder Upasana Taku.

MobiKwik has already witnessed a more than 40% increase in app downloads within less than 18 hours of the demonetization. Additionally, user traffic and merchant queries tripled among its over 35 million users.

A move to a cashless economy will ensure lower cost and improved transparency in transactions. Every transaction you make online is usually done through a bank or a third-party service such as Paytm. It would make it easier for the government to note any discrepancies between a person’s actual income and his/her transactions and to follow up with investigations.

“There has been significant increase in the load money transactions by up to 40-45% during the first half of the day and we are expecting the spike in the short term,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services India Pvt. Ltd. “However, this situation is going to stabilize to a new normal, which should be at least 40-45% of the pre-announcement period. In terms of average ticket size, each Oxigen wallet is also expected to jump by 50% going forward. All this because most people will become comfortable in adopting digital wallet for their everyday transactions.”

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.