Demonetisation: The big gainers from Modi's diktat

Vijay Shekhar Sharma, head of Paytm, says they'd achieve their 500-million user target by 2018, two years before the earlier aim

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The past 24 hours have done for digital wallets what 10 years of existence could not. The Modi government's blitzkrieg on Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes has pumped new life into the slowly unfolding digital money revolution.

Overnight, mobile wallets have started believing they would not only be able to achieve their earlier targets but do so well before the set deadlines. Vijay Shekhar Sharma, boss at India's largest mobile wallet entity, Paytm, said they'd achieve their 500-million user target by 2018, two years before the earlier aim.

"We're targeting a million merchants by the end of this week and four million by March," he told this newspaper. On Wednesday, it saw a 435 per cent traffic increase and of 200 per cent in app download. Also, a 400 per cent rise in offline payment transactions.

MobiKwik saw a 40 per cent increase in app downloads within 18 hours of the official announcement. User traffic and merchant queries went up 200 per cent from its 35-plus million users. The company has revised its business targets. "With this policy change, we expect a 10-time impact and to easily hit $10 bn in payments volume by 2017. We believe we'd be able to reach 150 mn users by next year itself," said Upasana Taku, co-founder.

Snapdeal-owned Freecharge also saw a surge in average transaction size within hours of the announcement, as well as a 12-fold increase in wallet balance. The company says it is now going to bring an advanced version of 'Paying with Freecharge'. "We are going to double our rate of growth," said Govind Rajan, chief executive.

The excitement of mobile wallets can be gauged from the huge advertisements they'd swiftly issued for Wednesday's newspapers. Paytm and Freecharge both had full-page ads in national dailies, congratulating the PM on the move and asking people to join the digital money revolution. "We worked at breakneck speed. Within an hour of the announcement, we had designed, conceptualised and spoken to the media houses," said a senior executive at Snapdeal.

Others, too, are getting into the action. Zomato, Ola, Big Bazaar, mobile wallets, restaurants — all cashed in. Big Bazaar stayed open till 11:50 pm on Tuesday, so that people could buy groceries. Dunkin' Donuts is offering 25 per cent off on payments via credit and debit cards. E-grocer Grofers offered 15 per cent cash back on cashless payments.