We're looking to onboard 20-25 mn wallets by March 2023: Bajaj Finance MD

In an analyst call held by Morgan Stanley, Rajeev Jain says his firm is on course to apply for various licenses that are needed to be a full-service payments player

Consumer financier Bajaj Finance, which launched its wallet business this July, is aiming to onboard 20-25 million wallets onto its fold by March 2023. The company is currently onboarding 800,000 to 1 million new wallets every month, managing director (MD) Rajeev Jain said.

Addressing an analyst call organised by Morgan Stanley, Jain said, “We are doing quite well on our wallet downloads. We foresee that we will have 20-25 million wallets by the end of March 2023.”

“We have started to engage them for debit transactions. We are well on the path to apply for various licenses that are needed to be a full-service payments player. We have started to onboard teams for the payments business,” he said.

The company in its investor presentation for Q1FY22 had said that in order to strengthen its presence in the payments business, it has taken board approvals to apply for a payment aggregator (PA) license and Bharat Billpay Operating Unit (BBPOU) license.

Its digital wallet is a part of a broader strategy by the lender to expand its digital offerings. In its Q1FY22 investor presentation, the lender had said it expects to onboard over 5 million customers for its wallet business in FY22. As of July 18, it had onboarded 320,000 customers.

In May this year, the lender received Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) approval for running its own wallet business, post which it developed a wallet application called ‘Bajaj Pay’, which offers integrated payment solutions, consisting of UPI, PPI, EMI card and credit card to its customers.

It is also developing ‘Bajaj Pay’ for its merchant partners, which should help it to broaden the payment solution offering of the company to its approximately 98,300 merchants; enabling higher growth and larger market shares.

“Our business transformation train is on track. We have decided to launch the new three-in-one ecosystem app in three-four sprints. The first phase with just 1 per cent of the customer, which has gone live. We will launch the second sprint before October 31 and the final sprint by November end,” Jain said.

He said that the company’s omnipresence plan is chugging along well and by the end of the financial year, they should be present in 3,500 cities across the country.