Digital wallets have managed to bring down cost of transactions by reducing reliance on cash
From left: Rahul Parikh, Head, Aditya Birla Money, MyUniverse; T. R. Ramachandran, Country Manager—India & South Asia, VISA; Narayan Krishnamurthy, Editor, Outlook Money; Naveen Surya, MD, ItzCash Card; Ritesh Pai, Senior President and Country Head—Digital Banking, Yes Bank
In recent times, rarely does a conversation go without mention of Uber or Ola and the ease at which a tap on the phone gets you a car to reach your destination. The second discussion of the day revolved around the impact of e-wallets or digital wallets. How Fintech companies have shaken long standing institutions and shown them the way to target the un-penetrated section of the universe earlier. Naveen Surya shared how over the years his company had moved from prepaid cards to digital wallets, allowing a different consumer set to be less reliant in carrying cash. Digital wallets have managed to bring down cost of transactions by reducing reliance on cash. The changing ecosystem is helping even traditional banks to explore an automatically existing avenue that was untapped by many.
T. R. Ramachandran stressed on the need for open platforms which will allow people to transact easily across products and service providers to make digital transactions more transparent and easy to access. Ritesh Pai felt the need for late entrants to collaborate with Fintech companies than try reinventing the wheel. He also felt that the pace at which things were moving there was a need for constant upgradation. On the issue of excessive availability of data and analytics, Rahul Parikh felt that a lot depended on not just the quality of data, but also how best it could be put in filling existing gaps. The advent of payment banks was yet another interesting point of discussion, which the panel felt would succeed only if it tried to capture the non-urban markets.
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