Study of Existing State and Growth Prospects of Mobile Payment
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SSRG International Journal of Economics and Management Studies (SSRG-IJEMS) – Volume 6 Issue 10 – Oct 2019 Study of Existing State and Growth Prospects of Mobile Payment Platforms in India Parul Singh#1, Kriti Thapliyal*2 #Assistant Professor, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, IIFT Bhawan, B-21, Qutab Institutional Area, New Delhi, Delhi 110016, India * Project Lead, New Projects, Marketing & Sales, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd 1, Nelson Mandela Road, Vasant Kunj II, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi 110070, India Abstract cheque, credit/debit cards or online banking (NEFT, The advent of digital revolution, huge RTGS) an individual can use a mobile to pay for a demographic dividend, penetration of smartphones wide range of products or services. Electronic and internet, entry of non-traditional players, commerce has found an obvious successor in Mobile increasing customer demands and enabling commerce which the advent of technology and value government regulations are driving the growth of proposition of enhanced utility. The capability to pay digital payments in India. The consumers today want digitally coupled with a mobile application/website is a smooth end-to-end experience and are willing to the engine behind mobile payments platforms. The break the habit of using cash for convenience and Digital Payments ecosystem includes consumer, faster check-outs. Mobile money is filling the gaps of merchant and the Payment Service Provider (PSP) delivering low-cost merchant acceptance at the last who enables the transfer of money. The capability of mile. The merchants who used cash only due to making a payment from anywhere with network proclivity towards it or high cost of card payments connectivity has become a normal phenomenon and are today adopting this change. The paper aims to does not require too much technical expertise. The cover the factors affecting the Mobile Payment future of payments processing will evolve with the Platforms industry in India. It decodes the consumer advent and mass adoption of mobile payments. Less and merchant insights and discusses the drivers and dependency on availability of physical currency and challenges to adoption of this technology. It also evolution of technologies to ease mobile payments covers a comparative analysis of the existing mobile will further impact the consumer behaviour. payments platforms. India is moving from a low The history of mobile payments dates back to 1997 volume and high transaction cost to high volume and when Coca Cola launched few vending machines low transaction cost digital economy and Mobile where the customer could make a purchase using his Payments Platform will play an important role in the mobile phone. The customer had to send a SMS text future. Mobile payment platform is relatively a new to the vending machine to make a payment and the industry in India, which hasn’t been studied much. machine would then vend their product out. It Hence, an attempt is made in this paper to cover accepted text messages for making bank account various aspects related to Mobile Payments transactions. In late 2000s public radio programs Platforms and add to the body of knowledge. made use of USSD based mobile payment technology to collect donations from listeners. The users had to Keywords — Mobile Payment Platforms, Mobile send an SMS text with a particular code given by the Wallets, E-Wallets, Demonetization, Digital Money radio program to an assigned number, as to make a donation. This donation amount would be then added I. INTRODUCTION to the listener's phone bill. The mobile payment revolution is already here, Though the Mobile Payments Platform industry and it has started empowering the consumers. remained stagnant for a while because of lack of Convenience and the ease of making payments on the technological innovation to promote mass adoption, it go with one click has its comfort and benefits. A is undergoing a massive transformation today. mobile payment or M-payment is defined as any According to a Euromonitor article (2017) mobile monetary payment where a mobile device such as payments are expected to reach US$3 trillion by 2021. mobile, tablet, PDA is used to initiate, authorize and There is an ongoing digital revolution in India and confirm an exchange of financial value in return for the mobile payment platforms’ landscape is goods and services (Au and Kauffman, 2007). Mobile metamorphosing- i.e. it is undergoing a major Payment Platforms are those service providers which transformation and maturing. The Digital Payments, facilitate this transfer of money via a portable device especially Mobile Payments Platforms which drive operated under financial regulations of a country. this revolution promise access to formal financial Instead of paying with the traditional means like cash, services and benefits of electronic-commerce to the ISSN: 2393 - 9125 www.internationaljournalssrg.org Page 124 SSRG International Journal of Economics and Management Studies (SSRG-IJEMS) – Volume 6 Issue 10 – Oct 2019 people located in the remotest parts of the country. adequate credit where needed by vulnerable groups Overall Digital Payments volume and value reached such as weaker sections and low-income groups at an 10.9 Billion and ₹2141071 Billion respectively in affordable cost” (RBI Committee and Rangarajan 2016-17, according to the Annual Digital Payment 2008). The paper Financial Inclusion: Issues and Report by Niti Aayog. This amounted to a growth Challenges (Dev, 2006) highlights the instability and rate of 55% in volume and 24% in value over 2015- high vulnerability associated with the profession of 16. The Pre-Paid Instruments (PPI) segment of farming in the country. Along with credit Digital Payments which includes mobile wallets, requirements from reliable sources, farmers need smart cards, and vouchers showed the most other financial services like insurance and savings. spectacular growth of 162.5% in this time period. The Self-help groups play an important role in The Mobile Platform Payments Service Providers increasing financial inclusion by spreading awareness (PSPs) in India consist of both bank and non-bank and promoting usage of mobile wallets. Along with players. There are 55 authorised Pre-Paid Payment the farmers, other poor sections of the society have to Instruments (PPIs), eleven authorised payments be empowered. The process of becoming a cashless banks, nine authorised cross-border money transfer economy will make it necessary to transform from operators and six authorised white-label Automatic bottom to the top of the administration while Teller Machines (ATM) operators according to the overcoming the roadblocks of infrastructural, Report. technological, security, regulatory and social issues. The Ministry of Finance Report on Digital The paper Acceptance of mobile money by poor Payments gives to few benefits to increase and citizens of India (Chauhan, 2015) states that M- inculcate the usage of Mobile Payments Platform. money may be the best way to achieve financial The first reason is financial inclusion. It is a inclusion. It discusses how big multinational significant challenge that India faces. Only 53% of companies rallied into the mobile payment platforms India had access to formal financial services in 2014. industry gauging its high growth potential. The paper After continuous reforms and policy introductions, associates trust with the adoption of M-money. still 19% of Indian population is unbanked or Mobile wallets may not provide all the benefits of a financially excluded. The most prominent of these bank i.e. credit, insurance or interest but it has initiatives are Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana advantages like reduced ability to reach remote (PMJDY) and Digital India. The second reason is that locations and reduced transaction time and cost with usage of cash is expensive. Though there are higher productivity. M-Powering India: Mobile perceived benefits of using cash like instantaneous Communication for Inclusive Growth (Adler and settlement, anonymity, and security associated with Uppal, 2008) says that digitalization will increase physical value there are a lot of implicit costs democracy and transparency in the country. associated with cash. Mobile Payments digital allow Foundation of Mobile Growth in India is based on the services to be delivered at much lower costs and are development of four pillars viz. Infrastructure, highly scalable and easily accessible. As per the promoting usage of mobile-currency, increasing m- report (2016) by ‘Committee on Digital governance and encouraging regulations. Payments’ formed by Ministry of Finance, Government of India, India is a cash heavy economy, A. Drivers of Mobile Payment Platforms with around 78% of all payments happening in cash. There is a significant rise in the usage of We have a substantially high cash to GDP ratio of Mobile Payments Platforms in India and the future is 12.04% than comparable countries. According to few bright. The key drivers for this industry are: estimates, transitioning to an electronic platform for • Technology and Demographics – Digital government payments could save ₹100,000 Crores Revolution: India has a huge demographic annually, with the cost of the transition being dividend and is set to become the second estimated at INR 60,000 to INR 70,000 Crores largest user of smartphones and internet users (Committee to review the framework related to on mobile phones by 2020. India has over one Digital Payments’ report, 2016) billion mobile subscriptions. The use of The exponential growth of the sector and internet on mobile phone is increasing sharply. increasing consumer adoption to the mobile payment 2017 saw boom in Internet Penetration in India platforms makes is an important topic to be studied. with the disruption brought in by Reliance Jio The sector is being transformed and has seen and further competitive pricing by all the other remarkable progress along with regulatory support service providers. Today around 240 million over the past few years. This makes it interesting to people use smartphones and this is set become study the mobile payment platforms ecosystem in over 520 million by 2020.