Looking to pay through your mobile? Try these apps

Pay for petrol, buy lunch, shop for groceries—without taking out your wallet. All you need to do is tap or click on your smartphone. In a country where many users are going online through mobile, digital wallets could well be the next big thing.

Also called electronic wallets or e-wallets, this technology allows you to make financial transactions with a smartphone. This could include paying for stuff when you’re at a shop with just a tap of your phone, transferring money to a friend, or paying for movie tickets, cabs, home bills, travel, without taking out your credit or debit card, or cash.

Start-ups and companies are hopping on to the bandwagon with options ranging from Near-Field Communication (NFC), Bluetooth and even money transfer to a phone number without details of the other person’s bank account.

Internationally too, companies like Apple, Google and Amazon have gotten into the space with their own e-wallets, exploring this nascent technology. In India, however, regulations and policies make the process of implementation a little different. To protect consumers, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) mandates that each online transaction in the country go through two-factor authentication. Step 1 is the CVV number and step 2, a one-time-password (OTP). This process, which is not required in other countries, has proved to be a slight hiccup for companies like Uber, a US-based ride-sharing service, in accepting cash-free payments from customers. In August, the RBI rapped Uber when it started routing its payments through international gateways to automatically bill its Indian consumers and avoid the cumbersome two-step authentication.

Uber was not alone. Other e-merchants had been doing it too. The RBI issued a circular later that month, making it mandatory for all companies to settle payments within the country with two-factor authentication by October. “If someone has violated the rules, they should be pulled up,” says Saurabh Tripathi, partner and director at Boston Consulting Group, a strategy and general management consulting firm. He believes, however, that the current mobile payment regulations can be eased a bit. “For example, RBI could change it to a single-factor authentication for small payments of, say, up to ₹ 1,000,” he says. This will give a push to the new technology and make mobile payments more common.

Some Indian start-ups are trying to figure out ways to work with the guidelines. “The extra step of second authentication adds friction, making the dropout rate higher,” says Nitin Gupta, chief executive officer (CEO) of PayU India, an online payment processor company. To deal with it, Gupta acquired Eashmart, a mobile-based payment app, in October to add a single nifty feature to his app: “When you start a transaction, we request the bank to send you a One-Time Password, which our app automatically reads and shows you. All you do is say yes.”

Looking to pay through your mobile? Then try out some of these apps in the market right now.

KayPay

Launched in October, KayPay is a simple way to transfer money to any of your Facebook friends. To begin, you have to log into KayPay’s site with your Facebook ID, allow it to use your Facebook profile information, and then add your bank details. Once that’s done, simply select the Facebook friend you want to send money to, put in the amount and the OTP sent to your phone. Your friend gets a notification about the money in her Facebook account and can log in within 48 hours into KayPay’s site to retrieve it. If she doesn’t, the money comes back to your account. Your bank account details stay with Kotak Mahindra Bank, the creators of the app, but it is not necessary to have an account with Kotak to use this app.

Charges undisclosed. Currently works with 27 banks. www.kaypay.com

MobiKwik wallet

MobiKwik is a prepaid wallet. Once you fill it up, you can use it to recharge your phone, pay your bills, transfer money and buy from e-merchants. Money can be transferred into the MobiKwik wallet through cards, cash and netbanking, and it supports payment to major e-merchants like BookMyShow, Dominos, redBus, etc. “MobiKwik now processes about 200,000 transactions a day,” says Bipin Preet Singh, founder and CEO, MobiKwik. “Forty per cent of them come from movie and bus ticket bookings, purchases on e-commerce sites and bill payments, and 60% via phone recharges.” Now it is working on adding an e-KYC process so that users can increase the maximum wallet limit from ₹ 10,000 to ₹ 50,000.

Free on Web, Android, Windows, iOS and BlackBerry. www.mobikwik.com

HotRemit

Launched in October, HotRemit allows you to transfer money to another HotRemit account, or to a Facebook, mobile or BBM contact, without the other person’s bank account details. Other than transferring money, you can also use the app to pay e-merchants. Currently, the app makers are working on launching their Android and iOS apps and convincing merchants to adopt NFC payments, where you just tap your phone to make the payment. “Additionally, the app manages your expenses and shares them with your bosses (for official expenses that have to be reimbursed) or family on request,” says Hyderabad-based Jay Krishna, director, solutions and operations.

1-2.5% wallet loading fee. On Facebook and BlackBerry. www.hotremit.com

iKaaz

If you are an early adopter who wants to try something similar to Apple Pay here in India, right now, head to iKaaz. What’s cool is that they’ve developed a nifty NFC tag that can be pasted behind any smartphone and will instantly enable the NFC feature in any phone, even those that didn’t originally have it. You put in the money in the app, tap the merchant’s terminal and put in the PIN. That’s it, payment made. Considering NFC is available only in high-end phones right now, that’s pretty neat. “Low-cost payments won’t even require a PIN,” says Bengaluru-based Soma Sundaram, founder and CEO, iKaaz.

₹ 40 per NFC tag. Available at select merchants. Ikaaz.com

Citrus Cash

Launched in February, the app is a prepaid wallet in which you push in cash via your bank account or credit card. You can then use this cash to send, receive and transfer money via email, mobile contact or bank. In case your phone is stolen, you can report it with an email, so that your account can be blocked immediately. The app comes with a password and can be used with 30-plus banks. Next up, they’re developing a feature with which event organizers can collect advance payments via the app.

Free on Android and iOS. www.citruspay.com

PayUMoney

This is perfect for people who don’t like the current hassle of two-factor authentication for payments. PayUMoney, a prepaid wallet developed by PayU India, uses your card details and sends an automatic query to your bank for an authentication SMS, which is then automatically read so that you don’t have to leave the app at all. “All you have to do is press accept and then okay again,” says Nitin Gupta. The app launched in August and was updated with this feature in October. PayUMoney offers a discount of up to 10% on every transaction and keeps your money safe with encryption and a multi-level password. It also allows you to search for merchants by their quick recognition codes, email IDs or phones.

Free on Android. www.payumoney.com

Oxigen Wallet

This snazzy app, launched in August, allows you to share money with family, friends and colleagues over Facebook, WhatsApp, Google+ and Twitter, without the receiver’s bank-account details. The wallet allows you to log in with Facebook or Google+ and ask for airtime or gift it to friends. Other services include recharging prepaid phones, direct broadcast satellite services (Tata Sky, Airtel Digital TV, etc), topping up data cards and paying bills. This month, they have tied up with the café chain Café Coffee Day. “We’ve processed more than two billion payment transactions exceeding ₹ 20,000 crore,” says Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services. The app currently has 1.5 million mobile wallet accounts.

1-1.5% convenience fee in the case of money transfer or cash top-up. On Android, iOS, Windows and Web. www.oxigenwallet.com