Tatas to expand mobile wallet service

Tata Teleservices obtained the licence for mobile wallets from the RBI and started its pilot in 2011

The Tata group has given up its plans to start a bank but group company Tata Teleservices is going ahead with its plans for a mobile payments retail service. The company obtained the licence for its mRupee mobile wallet service from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and started a pilot project in 2011.

Two years later, the pre-paid mobile payments service is looking to increase the number of merchants to 35 by March from 12. Even with its limited reach, mRupee claims to have 250,000 transactions a month in the 11 cities that it operates. It plans to take it to 26 cities by March.

“We plan to add more retail outlets into the merchant that accept mobile wallets,” said Pradeep Kumar Sampath, chief operating officer, Mobi Wallet Payments Systems, the fully owned subsidiary of Tata Teleservices that runs mRupee. Most merchants accept mRupee for hotel & airline bookings, direct-to-home services and utility payments.

The company expects this business to grow 30 per cent every month. Analysts say mobile wallet payments will be helpful in the small towns, where credit and debit card payments are not accepted easily, especially for smaller amounts. Said Eric Anklesaria, partner (business advisory services) at EY: “If you move away from metros, charges are levied on card-based transactions. If you go to even smaller towns, they prefer cash. But if mobile-to-mobile payments are made possible, they would be accepted as they are instantaneous.

Otherwise, settlement cycles for card transactions are very long.” mRupee, unlike Airtel Money and Vodafone’s mpaisa, is not limited by the operator. A user with any network’s connection can use the mRupee service, offered across 1,700 retail outlets. mRupee also does not piggyback on Tata DoCoMo’s brand, unlike its competitors.