As we all know that the digital walley industry has been buffeted hard and is often changing by its regulations, but it is yet to see the biggest change.
The Reserve Bank of India has released the guidelines for the interoperations amongst the digital wallets finally enshrining the rules around how the wallets from various companies will ne interacting with each other.
Just like a part of the decision, the digital wallets in India will become interoperable that would mean that the users of one wallet will be freely able for transferring money to another wallet.
ALSO READ: Surfing internet in plane soon possible
This is in stark contrast to how wallets operated thus far, and restricted their use among users of the same wallet.
The regulations which is in effect will put all the wallets on an even keel. The users say that Paytm can now freely transfer the money for the Mobikwik users and the Jio Money users will be able to send money to the Ola Money users.
In the prior phase the users will be able to transfer the money from one wallet to another along with thr underlying transactions those occur through UPI.
In the next phase the users can transfer the amount from their wallets to the bank accounts and the third phase enables the users to transfer money along with the gift cards to thr other sources.
The move can upturn the wallet landscape of India just like it exists today. For the beginners, it allows to make the wallets much more compelling ways for money transfer until thrle users of that particular wallet with transfers across the wallets is possible. All the wallets in the country are connected to one another.
This inturn means that the user base of each wallet is equivalent to number of wallets accounts. With the number of potential users increasing for every wallet in the country, wallet transactions will likely rise in the coming months.
It is difficult to predict the future of individual wallet companies. The move nullifies the network effects overnight that the wallet companies had worked hard for building from the last few years.
A brand new wallet launching nowadays will have the same userbase as Paytm, which has over 200 million users. This will, to a degree, level the playing field among wallet companies.
This, in conjunction with the last interoperability guidelines, would mean that users don’t need to complete the KYC process for every wallet they use; they could simply complete their KYC for a single wallet, and use it for all future wallet transactions.
In this case, companies with large KYC user-bases will have an advantage — a new wallet company will have to make its users go through another KYC process for it to be used, which could prove to be a source of friction in signing up new customers.
The smaller wallet players seem to be the welcoming move Wow, thank you RBI! Finally!,” tweeted Mobikwik CEO Bipin Preet Singh. “Game changing for digital payments in India,” he added.
Paytm haven’t reacted on the biggest waet player those hint that is not quite as the enthused about all the directives. It is early days for predicting on how the move will affect India’s many wallet companies.
ALSO READ: Have you used Aadhaar as KYC? Your Mobile Can Be Disconnected
