Online Payment Firms Find Their Golden Goose in Festive Sales

BENGALURU: Digital payment firms are seeing increased sales during festivals like Akshaya Tritiya backed by attractive offers. Bengaluru-based PhonePe said that it saw a six times jump in value of gold purchases on Tuesday last week because of Akshaya Tritiya.

“In 2018 alone, we have sold roughly 600 kg of gold on PhonePe. This year on Akshaya Tritiya, we saw a spike in overall sales by sixfold in value against normal days. Deliveries as usual on auspicious occasions have seen a seen a massive upswing,” said a PhonePe spokesperson.

Similarly, Paytm which was the first payment entity in India to launch digital gold purchases in a major way said it has seen a sevenfold jump in purchase of gold through the platform on Akshaya Tritiya. Another Mumbai-based wallet company TMW which also sells digital gold, said it has sold around 5 kg of gold on the occasion alone, against a daily average of 1kg. Digital gold has been promoted as an easy investment option for consumers using these apps for digital payments. Paytm launched digital gold on the same day in 2017 mainly to increase stickiness of its customers. Most of the companies have partnered with MMTC-PAMP for this product.

PhonePe followed suit and just a month back Google Pay started offering digital gold as a product. While payment apps have sold digital gold and recorded a strong jump in transactions, card payments also zoomed mainly driven by increased sales by jewellers. Worldline, which deploys PoS terminals for banks and processes card transactions, validated this trend. As per latest data shared by the company, in the jewellery merchant category it reported a 33% jump in number of transactions and 38% jump in the value of money settled through these transactions.

Courtesy: Economic Times