Freecharge accepted at more than 1 lakh merchants now

BENGALURU: Snapdeal-owned Freecharge, a mobile wallet that competes with Paytm and Mobikwik, is now accepted at more than a lakh merchants for payments. Freecharge, which was acquired more than a year ago by Snapdeal, launched its wallet less than 8 months ago. The wallet companies have been adding offline merchants rapidly over the past year to widen the use case of the apps.

Govind Rajan, CEO, Freecharge, said, "In the last 8 months, we have expanded our reach in various sectors like food and beverages, travel, e-commerce, retail, entertainment, ticketing etc making our wallet ubiquitous in consumer’s daily lives. We have built a robust ecosystem by fostering a series of partnerships to achieve our mission of becoming the digital payments medium of India. The milestone echoes the merchants’ and consumers’ trust and faith in Freecharge."



Freecharge says that the payments in the app takes less than 10 seconds and has thus rapidly gained acceptance as a trusted and easy to use replacement for cash among merchants and consumers. The company is also expanding its reach by partnering with payment aggregators like ePaisa, CCAvenue, Ezetap and Pine Labs to facilitate payments through Freecharge wallet at various point of sale (PoS) terminals and online payment gateways.



Among the various offline merchants that has forged partnerships with Freecharge, are brands like Shoppers Stop, McDonalds, Café Coffee Day, Cleartrip, RedBus, OYO etc. With aggressive growth plans, Freecharge aims to reach 5 million merchants in next 18 months. Recently, a Nielson study revealed that Freecharge wallet is the fastest growing wallet in the country with a reach of 30%. Freecharge says it has a 99% success ratio in completing transactions. The company had also launched a virtual card, Freecharge Go, which can be used as a debit card.