Demonetisation helps Biyani's app cross 1-mn mark

Future Pay accounts for 1% of Big Bazaar's weekly sales, while Paytm accounts for 0.65%

Future Pay, a digital wallet from the Future group, has seen its sales overtake that of Paytm in group chain Big Bazaar’s weekly sales, said a group executive. Future Pay accounts for one per cent of Big Bazaar’s weekly sales, while Paytm accounts for 0.65 per cent. It was launched in the first week of October, almost a month before the demonetisation move.

“We have seen one million downloads and are expecting 10 million downloads soon,” said Kishore Biyani, chief executive officer of the group.

The app has a feature which compares prices on customer bills with competitors’ advertised prices. If it finds the price is lower with the latter, it credits the difference to the customer’s Future Pay Wallet. It can be used as cash across Future Group outlets such as Big Bazaar, Ezone and Home Town. “This is our answer to offline and online discounts. Now, we are also lower than Amazon,” Biyani, a known baiter of e-commerce companies, had said then.

“Demonetisation has helped us in a big way. If it was not there, we would have taken a long time to achieve the one-million mark. Normally, we see glitches in functioning of cards during the weekend but in our app there are no such issues,” said Vinay Bhatia, CEO — group loyalty and analytics, Future group.

The wallet, developed in partnership with Oxygen Services, allows customers to make transactions after loading money by using credit cards, debit cards or net banking. Though the price match is expected to put pressure on the group’s margins and profits, additional sales from the wallet services are expected to make good that loss, analysts said.