With the Reserve Bank of India’s crackdown on Paytm Payments Bank on January 31, for not complying with regulations, downloads of rival BharatPe and MobiKwik have seen a significant surge in new merchants onboarding their platform.
For instance, merchant sign-ups on BharatPe’s platform have doubled in the first week of February, compared to a similar period in January. Particularly in metros, merchant sign-ups are up 104% over the first week in January, while those in tier 2 and 3 cities jumped 95%, industry sources said.
Meanwhile, MobiKwik saw a 50-60% rise in new merchants onboarding its platform so far this month, compared to a similar period in January. The gross merchandise value of offline merchants using their platform jumped 40% during this time, while that of online merchants rose 30%.
The platform is also seeing an increase in inbound offline merchant leads – who are inquiring to get onboarded. Not just merchant signups, overall UPI transactions also increased by 50% on MobiKwik’s platform.
To meet the surge in demand, MobiKwik is doubling its sales force in the next one month and investing heavily in expanding its offline presence in areas such as mom and pop shops, petrol pumps, and organised retail chains, sources said.
MobiKwik has recently re-filed its Draft Red Herring Prospectus with Securities and Exchange Board of India to raise Rs 700 crore through an initial public offering. This is the fintech’s second attempt to go public after 2021, when it cancelled the IPO plan citing weak market conditions.
Besides BharatPe and MobiKwik, PhonePe had also said earlier that it witnessed a surge in inbound requests from merchants for QRs and SmartSpeakers – a device that was originally introduced in the Indian market by Paytm to give voice alerts for every transaction.
Not just merchant signups, downloads of PhonePe, Google Pay, and MobiKwik apps have seen double-digit growth in the week following January 31, while Paytm saw a decline of 32%. According to data from app intelligence platform AppTweak, Walmart-owned PhonePe has so far been the biggest beneficiary of the uncertainty, with its downloads jumping 40% during that week.
