Oxigen Launches Semi-Closed Wallet, Allows Peer To Peer and Bank Transfers

Payment solution service company, Oxigen Services India Private Limited, has launched a social mobile wallet service, Oxigen Wallet. With the new service, people will now be able to share money with their friends and family over their preferred social networks and messaging platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, Google+, and Twitter.

The wallet can also be used to recharge one’s mobile phones, pay bills and shop across a large number of online merchants. Oxigen, which has processed over 2 Billion payment transactions exceeding INR 20,000 crores, through small retail, modern retail chains and banking websites sees the potential of social media usage to bring innovative solutions to the market and simplify payments.

This is the first of it’s kind semi-open wallet in India where customers can, besides paying for bills and recharges, can also transfer money to anyone, even to a non-wallet user, as well as directly into a bank account. The money is loaded into the wallet via debit or credit card, where Oxigen charges a small 1.5% loading fee.

In ‘semi-closed’ or ‘semi-open’ mobile prepaid instruments, you can load money into your cell phone from a licensed company and make payments with it, but you can’t use it to withdraw money directly from retailers by bypassing the bank. Mobile wallets that revolutionised financial services systems in countries such as Kenya are ‘open’ ones, which you can use both for making payments and withdrawing cash.

By using the Oxigen Wallet service, which is currently available through Apple Store & Google Play Store and the web, users can easily send money to their friends and family using any social channel, without ever needing the receiver’s bank account details. Along with money, users can also send photos, videos, and audio and text messages to personalize the transfer.

In the coming weeks, users will also be able to gift or ask for a mobile recharge.

“Merging payments with social and mobile will change the way people pay for their everyday needs.  We will continue to evolve the service by adding more products & features, thereby creating an ecosystem for payments where you will no longer need multiple mobile apps for payments of different services. In other words, a single mobile app will meet all your payment needs and set money free, in its true senses”, said Pramod Saxena, Founder, Chairman & Managing Director of Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Limited.

This new service is bank and operator agnostic i.e. everyone on a mobile irrespective of telecom operator can download the app and use the Oxigen Wallet™. A consumer can also easily send money to a non-wallet user by simply selecting the receiver from their social network, email or phone list.

Oxigen has brought in this new service Fastacash™. “We believe that social is going to play a critical role in the adoption of new technologies, especially as it relates to payments. India’s youth is adopting new services and technologies at a rapid pace. They are using their mobile devices to access content and stay connected through social platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, Viber, Twitter, among others”, said Vince Tallent, Chairman & CEO Fastacash.

Given the social nature of the service, it will find a high usage amongst the youth who go out for meals with their friends, split bills, send smaller but more frequent gifts to one another. In addition, they can also use the service for their own mobile recharges, bill payments and for payments on merchant sites.

Oxigen Services India Private Limited, is a single point payment solution provider serving over hundred million mobile customers at retail, processing nearly half a billion transactions annually. It has already acquired 1.5 Mn mobile wallet accounts, clocking close to 1 Mn transactions a month and connecting over 50+ brands and has 40 Mn + transactions per month. It also provides Online and on Mobile Merchant Payments services, using Oxigen’s signature white‐label solution, to many telecom operators/bank‐led mobile Wallets and online/mobile Banking portals.

Oxigen Wallet was launched in 2008 and in May 2013 it became the first non-banked wallet to be integrated with NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India), allowing for Instant Money Transfers anytime, anywhere using IMPS.