FreeCharge adoption surges 10X
online merchants impacted by the phasing out of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes.
A Snapdeal spokesperson says, “We support the demonetization effort by the government, and are committed to making this transition as frictionless and convenient as possible for our consumers. We worked closely with our users throughout the last week to ensure there was no lapse in their experience, and they have responded by swiftly adopting alternative payment modes, especially the ‘Wallet on Delivery’ option. We will continue to monitor the situation closely, and do as required to ensure it is business as usual on our platform.”
Meanwhile, the government on its part appealed to the public to support the move and stated that there was no question of a roll back happening. With many consumers opting for cashless options, the importance of the United Payment Interface (UPI) and ecosystems, such as Blockchain have come into focus.
Trishneet Arora, Founder & CEO, TAC Security, says, “Going cashless is the future in a economy that is becoming digital. The demonetisation is a good move for the IT sector. There is also a need for better security systems so that people can trust digital mediums of transactions better. A pertinent need for greater awareness exists as credit card frauds cost banks and credit card companies over $8 billion each year. Apart from the Apple Pay fraud, such large-scale ‘mobile wallet frauds’ have not been witnessed so far, if we discount customer carelessness from the picture. However, there is serious lack of awareness and understanding of this risk. Several business personalities are not taking cyber threats seriously.” The emphasis on a digital economy, are but two sides of the coin. Growing pains as they say. The demonetization drive made FreeCharge do away with the initial set-up charges and also the commission charged to merchants on each transaction. To make the complete digital payments process free, it also waived the charge for transferring funds from the FreeCharge wallet to the merchant’s bank. This offer led to a sharp increase in the number of merchants signing up to start receiving payments through FreeCharge.
The company has revealed that nearly 60% of the merchants who signed up in the days following Nov 8 demonetization announcement, received their first digital payment within one hour of starting their FreeCharge wallet.
FreeCharge has seen a 10X surge in the number of retail merchant sign-up queries, with most of the queries coming from grocery stores, pharmacies and food joints. The queries pertain to the sign-up process, documentation required to onboard, commercial arrangement etc.
In order to quickly enable the merchant on-boarding, FreeCharge has also started a drive asking its entire team to help the retail merchants in their proximity to sign-up as a merchant and help them start accepting the digital payments in the shortest possible time.