Fund transfers may go social

Chennai: Money transfer through social networks is the next stop for mobile wallet service providers. While transferring money through mobiles has become a boon-of-sorts to the country’s huge migrant population, e-wallet companies now want to rope in Gen-Y to the new-age solution to widen customer base.

“We believe that social networks are going to play a critical role in the adoption of new technologies, especially as it relates to payments,” said Mr Pramod Saxena, chairman and managing director of Oxigen Services India Pvt Ltd.

Most of the country’s internet-savvy youth is connected with their family and friends more through social networks than on calls, said the chairman of the company which has pioneered the concept of money transfer through social networks such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Viber, Twitter in India.

Though mobile wallet has been touted as a non-starter for long, the country’s migrant population seems to be giving a much-needed boost to the industry.

“Migrant transactions alone account to close to $30 billion in the country and when we add the $70 billion worth of international money transfers, the market is huge,” said Mr Saxena, who claims to have transacted Rs 1,500 crore on m-wallet in 2013.

By 2017, 385 million people will have smartphones, six times more than today and m-wallets might be important for Indian telcos to provide an interim means of undertaking e-store transactions, a recent Google-A.T. Kearney study. But regulatory restrictions, lack of awareness, standards, merchant acceptance and official ID remain key impediments of m-payments in India.

RBI’s tough stance on cash outs is still a major concern for many. “Enabling low value cash outs from the wallet will enable us to offer an end to end proposition to the end customer,” opined Mr Apoorva Mehrotra, TN business head of Vodafone that offers M-Pesa mobile wallet service.