Last month, BSNL launched its mobile wallet in collaboration with digital payments service Mobikwik. The company has now announced that its co-branded mobile wallet has clocked transactions over Rs. 1 crore within 45 days of its launch.
Both the companies are now expecting a 10-fold growth in gross merchandise value (GMV) over the next 12 months. "...the co-branded wallet has registered over Rs. 10 million GMV within the first 45 days of launch," the company said in a press statement.
At the time of launch, BSNL enabled one-tap bill payment for its 100 million subscribers across the nation. With this wallet, you can pay at more than 1.5 million customers across India.
"BSNL-MobiKwik wallet is an initiative to include semi-urban and rural India into the digital payments economy. We are enthralled by the initial response received, and hope to have 10-fold growth in GMV within the next 12 months," BSNL Chairman and MD Anupam Shrivastava said.
"This milestone further strengthens our belief in masses' disposition towards digital payments," he added.
GMV is used in online retailing to indicate total sales value of merchandise or services sold through a marketplace. This sales value will be calculated for a certain period of time. For example, in BSNL's case, the GMV was calculated for 45 days.
BSNL launched this wallet in the presence of telecom minister Manoj Sinha who said: "With this co-branded wallet, the ease of payment will be extended to all the customers while equally strengthening financial inclusion in the rural hinterlands, which often get neglected”.
With this collaboration, Mobikwik is also getting a much-needed boost because, in recent times, the digital payments service was overshadowed by its direct competitor Paytm.