After setting its dominance over multiple industries, India’s largest business house has ventured into the mobile payment business with the launch of Jio Money wallet. A part of Reliance Jio Infocomm, Jio Money wallet will pose a fierce competition for the other established players in Indian online wallet market, such as Paytm and FreeCharge. The JioMoney wallet will service mobile recharges, bill payments, insurance premium payments and even online shopping. Besides all, the striking feature is the send and receive money with other peers.
Recently, Reliance also launched its 4G service and its budget smartphone Reliance LYF with 4G capabilities. Reliance LYF smartphone made a fantabulous entry in the Indian smartphone market by capturing 7% of the total smartphone shipments share in India. The question lies, could Reliance replicate its Jio LYF smartphone success with JioMoney Wallet and lead the market which currently dominated by Paytm and Freecharge?
To enhance its versatility Reliance has partnered with around 50,000 online merchants. JioMoney app is available for both iOS and Android platforms. A year ago, Reliance received Payment Bank License from RBI that allows JioMoney to receive deposits as well. The highlighting trait of Reliance Jio wallet is that the customers are entitled to open their own bank account or link another account.
Online Wallet Market in India: Billion Dollars Opportunity
In today’s world, India posses a huge market potential for many industries that include the smartphones, tablets, online wallet industry etc. The other factor is the huge number of Reliance customers in India will facilitate its growth in online Wallet market.
Huge market for Mobile Wallet service in India
The rising number of the smartphone users will facilitate the market of Reliance Jio wallet. According to Gartner, the year 2016 will exhibit the estimated smartphone shipments surging up by whopping 29% and a continuous double-digit growth is expected in the following two years as well.
As of now, the number of mobile wallet users in India has reached 135 million. PayU Money, Paytm, MobiKwik, Oxigen and My Mobile Payments have captured around 70% of the market revenue. This clearly portrays a huge window of opportunity for mobile wallet companies. If we try to foresee the future of wallet market in India the prospects look rather more amazing. As an astounding 68% (CAGR) growth is estimated in online wallet industry which stood at $86 million in 2011 and is valued at $1.15 billion in 2016.
The scenario becomes more lucrative when you take the low penetration of smartphone into the consideration, which is just 17%. The future prospect of smartphone devices makes the market potential of online wallets more glittering.
Another factor is the Increasing LTE penetration that has acted as a magnet for many smartphone manufacturers to target India. The lowering ASP of 4G enabled Smartphone has encouraged Telecom providers to float more lucrative 4G packages than 3G. As users are findings more value along with high-speed mobile internet connectivity, they are either upgrading their 3G smartphone or preferring to buy 4G-enabled devices only.
Huge user base for Reliance
The astonishing success of Reliance Jio LYF smartphone has surely given hiccups to the other smartphone OEMs. The success of Reliance Jio LYF must have boosted the confidence of the company, which has, apparently, motivated them to launch their wallet service within few months.
The quality of mobile services provided by Reliance has always been exceptional and it would also work in favour of Reliance Jio Wallet. Reliance 4G network has been exceptional when compared to its competitors and delivering download speed up to 70 Mbps, while other players, such as Airtel, is able to offer a peak speed of 10-20 Mbps.
However, on the overall operator market front, Reliance has a daunting task to accomplish a sizable chunk of the market. As a network carrier, Reliance stands at 4th position with 9.93% of market share. Whereas, the undisputed leader Bharti Airtel is garnering 24.22% of the market share.
Reliance Jio Money: The Competition
Well, it may be too early to seal the fate of Reliance wallet as 70% of the total Wallet revenue is captured by the top players Paytm, PayU Money, Mobikwik and few others.
The mobile wallet industry in India is dominated by Paytm with over 120 million users and 2.5 million numbers of daily transactions. While MobiKwik has 25 million users, PayU Money has acquired 8 million users.
