Cash crunch fall-out: Non-bank payment players to witness huge growth, says ASSOCHAM Paper

One of the immediate fall outs of the demonitisation of high value notes would be a mushrooming growth in the number of non-bank players like Paytm and Free charge into the payment business, as more and more retailers in the goods and service value chain would be compelled to shift to non-cash modes for customer transactions, an ASSOCHAM Paper has said.

These players engaged into the business known as the pre-paid payment instruments (PPI) work as mobile and digital wallets. While as many as 45 PPI players have started offering services, it is only a handful of operators which have been aggressively ramping up and marketing their operations.

 

However, the demonitisation has come about as a big opportunity for them. It is not only during this immediate cash crisis period that the PPIs would see a huge growth, but going forward also, the system would penetrate into the very small kirana stores as well; it would not be a surprise if well-run road side dhabas also start accepting bills through mobile wallet players, said ASSOCHAM Secretary General Mr D S Rawat.

Offering the stored value service to the customers, the non-bank PPI issuers are allowed by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to enable transactions for purchase of goods and services besides remitting payments out of the mobile wallets. The wallet-to-wallet transactions would also see a big growth.

Given the thrust being given by the government to move towards the less-cash economy, the private sector PPIs is expected to invest lot more in product innovation and expand the reach through roping in both the customers and the merchants. Needless to say, at the merchants level a lot of sensitization, training and cyber security would be required, the chamber said.

These players are using the increasing mobile density to offer the services through the hand set. Besides, the PPIs, other electronic transactions and services devices would be offered aggressively even by the banks, who are presently bearing the brunt of cash swapping, it said.

The banks would offer on an enhanced scale mobile banking services through SMS, USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Services Data) and applications (Apps). Presently, according to RBI data, as many as 67 banks are offering mobile services to 120 million customers. This number is going to grow significantly, the ASSOCHAM said.

With the launch of Unified Payments Interface (UPI customers can provide only a registered virtual address instead of details of bank accounts for making/receiving payments However, the banks must use the App based UPI more aggressively as it can really be a game changer, Mr Rawat said.

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