Potential of digital commerce extremely promising: Mah Comviva

Digital commerce, like mobile wallets, has very promising prospects in India, which has over 900 million handset users, a white paper by mobility solutions firm Mahindra Comviva today said.
The paper, which was published in collaboration with Ovum Consulting, traced the growth and uptake of digital wallet services across developed and developing regions over the last 18 months.
"Potential for digital commerce and payments is extremely promising. However, the true value of digital wallet goes beyond the transaction. Digital wallets have the potential to generate an unprecedented amount of customer transactional data," Mahindra Comviva Senior VP and Head (Mobile Financial Solutions) Srinivas Nidugondi said.

Service providers can harness this information to design engaging, contextual experiences for each stage of customer's interaction on the path to purchase, he added.
"As the customer progresses through a transaction, service providers for instance, can leverage customer location and transaction data to listen and respond to customer's needs in real-time like deliver personalised offers," Nidugondi said.
Service providers need to capitalise and further accelerate the uptake of digital services by addressing critical issues like security, possible misuse of personal data and lack of information pertaining to the same, the white paper said.
To overcome this, the whitepaper recommends that security credentials be made visible to customers by adopting a simple approach. Moreover, customers require adequate information pertaining to the benefits of using this service, particularly vis a vis other payment mechanisms, it added.