Fintech shifting the goalpost? Wallets are passe as firms enter MFs, retail

'All the big hype and money spent in the last three years to acquire customers have not yielded the desired results,' Oxigen founder says of digital wallets

On November 9, 2016, India woke up to demonetisation and full-page jacket newspaper advertisements of Paytm, Freecharge and a few others thanking the Prime Minister for ushering in the era of digital money. The months that followed the note ban, digital wallet players went to town claiming an astronomical user base as well as transaction numbers. By January 2017, wallet companies claimed that they had more than 500 million users.

Cut to April 2018, most wallet companies are now selling mutual funds, powering digital transactions and loyalty programmes for retail firms, selling point of sale machines…. Essentially, they have moved