Oxigen mobile wallet launch, allows money transfers over social networks

Payment solutions provider Oxigen today launched its mobile wallet (mWallet) service, Oxigen Wallet, through which users can transfer money, purchase gifts for their friends and family on social networking platforms.   Besides, users would also be able to use their wallet to recharge their mobile phones, pay bills and shop across a large number of online merchants.   “Ours is the country’s first social mobile wallet service through which people can share money with their friends and family over their preferred social networks and messaging platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, Google+, and Twitter,” Oxigen Chairman and Managing Director Pramod Saxena told PTI.   The service will find a high usage among the youth who go out for meals with their friends, split bills, send smaller but more frequent gifts to one another, he added.   Besides, they can also use the service for their own mobile recharges, bill payments and for payments on merchant sites like for movie tickets, to book travel tickets, pay for pizza, get music and movie downloads, etc, Saxena said.   “Oxigen now sees the opportunity to leverage the social connect to India’s 900 million mobile users and 100 million Facebook accounts, where the youth is rapidly adopting social media apps like WhatsApp, Twitter etc,” he added.   By using the Oxigen Wallet service, which is currently available through Apple Store and Google Play Store, users can send money to their friends and family using their favourite social channel, without ever needing the receiver’s bank account details, Saxena said.   Along with money, users can also send photos, videos and audio and text messages to personalise the transfer. In the coming weeks, users will also be able to gift or ask for a mobile recharge, he added.   Oxigen has processed over 2 billion payment transactions exceeding Rs 20,000 crore, through small retail, modern retail chains and banking websites.   The firm processes nearly half a billion transactions annually and has already acquired 1.5 million mobile wallet accounts, clocking close to 1 million transactions a month.   PTI