Mobile wallet players laud RBI move to raise spend limits

They say woes of common man due to cash crunch will be eased with spending limits being doubled to Rs 20,000

Digital wallet companies on Wednesday welcomed the RBI's decision to increase the limits on mobile wallets spend to Rs 20,000 for users and to Rs 50,000 for merchant bank transfers in view of the cash crunch following demonetisation of high-value currency.

"RBI's steps will accelerate the adoption of mobile wallets in the country and ease the challenges being faced by the common man and shopkeepers due to cash crunch," Upasana Taku, co-founder MobiKwik, said in a statement.

"We have heard the challenges regarding wallet limit, first hand from our users, especially sellers, and some of those would exhaust their Rs 10,000 limit within a week and then struggle with the woes of dealing in cash in these times," she added.

Doubling the limit for wallet users, the Reserve Bank of India on Tuesday said: "The limit of semi-closed Prepaid Payment Instrument (PPI) that can be issued has now been enhanced from Rs 10,000 to Rs 20,000.

"Funds transfer from such PPIs are permitted only to the merchant's own linked bank account and upto an amount of Rs 50,000 per month, without any limit per transaction."

Chief Executive Freecharge Govind Rajan said in a statement: "This doubling of limits will have an immensely beneficial impact for users and small merchants.

"Given the quantum jump in digital wallets usage in recent days, this increase in limits makes it easier for both users and merchants to shift more of their cash transactions to digital wallets."

RBI has announced these measures till the end of the current calender year.