<div><em><strong>The wallet is equipped with state of the art technology and a robust partner network, reports K Chandra Mohan</strong></em></div><div> </div><div>Online e-commerce major Snapdeal-owned utility payments platform FreeCharge on Tuesday (15 September) launched a digital wallet in partnership with Mumbai-based private lender Yes Bank. </div><div> </div><div>Snapdeal had acquired FreeCharge in a deal believed to be worth around Rs 2,800 crore earlier this year and the launch of the new wallet could be seen as a challenge to digital payments player Paytm.</div><div> </div><div>The company claims that its wallet is able to reduce checkout times to less than 10 seconds. While FreeCharge already has a credit-based wallet-like feature in its app called 'FreeCharge Credits', which gets credited when a transaction is unsuccessful. By partnering with a payment bank licensee, FreeCharge can integrate the wallet with savings bank accounts via IMPS and NEFT transfers and issue ATM and debit cards. </div><div>The payments bank market is expected to hit $1 trillion 2019.</div><div> </div><div>The company will partner with FINO - a payments bank licensee to build scale and ability to reach even the under-served </div><div> </div><div>"With the launch of the FreeCharge digital wallet service, we are all set to transform the way people make payments. A secure, easy to use and feature-rich service, the wallet is equipped with state of the art technology and a robust partner network, making it a truly game-changing service that will bring value to consumers and our partners in the ecosystem," said FreeCharge co-founder Kunal Shah.</div><div> </div><div>"At Snapdeal we are building an ecosystem that powers billions of digital commerce transactions. With the launch of the FreeCharge Digital Wallet, we will now play an even more intrinsic role in our customers' lives," he added.</div><div> </div><div>FreeCharge said that its platform has 27 million registered users making more than 5 transactions per month per user, 8.2 million daily unique users, 4 million monthly engaged hours, 15 million stored cards, with combined with GMV of over $4 billion (roughly Rs 26,543 crore). Over 90 per cent of its transactions are from mobile devices, accounting for a volume of over 200 million transactions annually. The FreeCharge Digital Wallet is set to become India's most used wallet in the next 6 months.</div><div> </div><div>Anand Chandrasekharan, Chief Product Officer at Snapdeal compared the synergy between the two firms to eBay and PayPal, Taobao and Alipay.</div><div> </div><div>In line with Snapdeal's vision of building the most impactful digital commerce ecosystem in India, the FreeCharge digital wallet will enable a culture of digital payments through multiple partnerships.</div><div> </div><div>FreeCharge Digital Wallet is powered by cutting edge technology, consumer behaviour insights and innovations in payments. It is a robust and flexible platform that leverages enabling technologies such as HCE, NFC, QR code and BLE to bring in efficiencies in the consumers' purchase experience.</div>
