No-cash November pushes four-fold jump in e-wallet downloads

The demonetisation of higher currency has turned out pretty well for e-wallet apps especially for Paytm and State Bank of India’s mobile wallet.

“The daily download activity has been 1.7x to 4.6x average pre-demonetization levels,and Paytm and SBI have seen the biggest increases, to 190k/day and 107k/day, respectively,” Parag Gupta, Utkarsh Khandelwal and Gaurav Rateria, analysts from Morgan Stanley said in a report dated December 8.

The report said that before the announcement Paytm used to register 45,000 per day downloads while SBI had 23,000 downloads per day.

Image Source: Morgan Stanley report

Just a couple of weeks after PM Modi’s announcement Paytm said it had registered over 100% growth in online recharges and its user base doubled.

In August this year, Paytm had incorporated Paytm E-commerce Pvt Ltd and Paytm Payments Bank Ltd as separate entities.

And on December 5, the company announced that it would transfer its e-wallet business to its Payment Banks portal after it is granted license from Reserve Bank of India.

Exactly a month after the announcement the analysts said, “…download activity has picked up even more in the last two weeks vs the first two weeks of currency replacement.”