Indian Money Decision Impacts On Mobile Payments

The recent decision of the Indian government to scrap the 500 and 1,000 rupee notes has had a knock-on impact on the mobile payments industry. Since the two largest denomination notes were banned, the number of people signing up to mobile payments services has skyrocketed. The leading mobile payment service, Paytm, said that it saw a 200% increase in downloads and a 250% increase in transactions in the first few hours after the news was announced. It also broke its record for its highest number of transactions in a day, hitting 5 million daily transactions just a week after the notes were scrapped. Rival company MobiKwik also saw a big boost in the wake of the news, announcing that its average number of downloads had doubled to 2,000 downloads a day. The uptake of digital wallets was already on the rise, with the Reserve Bank Of India having recently revealed that mobile transactions had tripled in the last year. It seems that the scrapping of the 500 and 1,000 rupee notes is only helping to speed up this process. 

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