Oxigen e-wallet alters strategy

To concentrate on micro AT Ms; tie-up with Ad ar sh Credit Co-op

From being one of many in the crowded mobile wallet space, Oxigen Services has decided on moving to providing financial services via micro-ATMs.

The company will concentrate on adding customers in tier-II and tier-III cities, and beyond. With the change in its business model, the company has got into a tie-up with Adarsh Credit Cooperative Society. Their agreement is for Oxigen to deploy micro ATMs for Adarsh Credit’s advisors, for branchless banking and financial services.

Oxigen claims to be handling transaction values of ~12,000 crore a year. With this contract, it will add ~500 crore a month. Oxigen is to work with Adarsh’s base of 100,000 advisors across the country, making them its banking correspondents. They will offer services such as paperless bank account opening through e-key (an encrypted electronic key), banking services such as AEPS cash-in/out, cashless Bharat Bill Payment services and recharges.

With the tie-up, the company hopes to do ~6,000 crore in additional transactions a year.

Says Pramod Saxena, chairman of Oxigen: “We are definitely pivoting around micro ATMs; these cover all forms of payments systems. From being wallet capturing from our competition, we are trying to be a universal payments platform. This is why we have shifted our strategy. By 2020, we hope to deploy 200,000 micro ATMs, including 100,000 those for Adarsh.”

The company says around 15,000 Oxigen micro ATMs have been deployed in 10 months, with monthly transaction value of ~350 crore of cash in and cash out, on AEPS.

It claims these transactions are increasing at a compound annual rate of 50 per cent, quarter on quarter. The company has an offline retail base of 200,000 merchants.

“With Oxigen’s micro ATM, Adarsh Credit will reach its 2020 target of acquiring 100,000 new villages. Adarsh, with 100 per cent of its business happening via digital framework, will be able to provide its advisors with Oxigen’s micro ATM services, e-KYC, virtual RuPay Card, AEPS, value added services and more,” said Rahul Modi, chief executive at Adarsh.

Adarsh owns a core banking platform. Without being a bank, it has 809 branches and 300,000 agents, of which 100,000 are active transacting ones, servicing 1.8 million account holders as members, it claimed.

The firm says around 15,000 Oxigen micro ATMs have been deployed in 10 months, with monthly transaction value of ~350 cr of cash in and cash out, on AEPS