Why can’t all mobile wallets offer 6% interest to its users like MobiKwik?

MobiKwik announced on Wednesday that it will credit 6% interest or annual profit to its mobile wallet users on a monthly basis. This will be given to its over 30 million users.

However, to avail this rate of interest, users will have to maintain a balance of Rs 5,000 or more in their mobile wallets.

This is the only mobile wallet in the country to offer interest on money put into the account.

Apart from MobiKwik, there are several mobile wallet companies that have come up over the past few years in India. This includes only players such as Paytm, m-Pesa, Oxigen Wallet, Citrus Pay, mRupee and Freecharge.

In addition to this, banks and telecom operators also have their own mobile wallets -- viz., Airtel Money, Vodafone m-Pesa, Idea Money, Axis Bank’s Lime, SBI’s Buddy, ICICI Bank’s Pockets and HDFC Bank’s PayZapp.

However, none of these offer interest on money stored in the mobile wallet.

For MobiKwik users to avail 6% annual profit, they need to maintain an average of Rs 5,000 or more in their wallets per month, which is fair enough. Profits will be credited to users’ MobiKwik accounts on a monthly basis only. 

The company said that this is part of the company's plan to expand its services by offering solutions such as: instant micro loans.

Mobikwik is also working on reaching out to over 233 million unbanked Indians who do not have cards or bank accounts and digitising their cash experience by initiatives such as cash pick-up and more. This could work considering it the interest is more than what people get even they open a savings account.

Upasana Taku, Co-founder, MobiKwik said, “This announcement marks the revolutionary transformation of MobiKwik into a digital institution –to fulfil every Indian’s end to end financial needs by offering micro loans, profits on wallet balance and cashless transactions. Our mission is to enable users to pay, save, borrow and invest, all using their MobiKwik mobile wallet.”

The company claims to be growing at the rate of 250% per year and is expected to cater to 70 million users by the end of 2017.