Reliance Payment Solutions gets RBI approval for prepaid wallet service Jio Money

Reliance Payment Solutions Ltd, a subsidiary of Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), has obtained a licence from Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to go ahead with its prepaid mobile wallet service Jio Money.

The new service will enable Reliance's partners to offer prepaid wallets to their customers who can store money in the wallets and purchase goods & services offered through third-party merchants. However, users will not be able to withdraw money using the service.

The development was first reported by Medianama. Reliance is already offering prepaid card services R-Pay and digital wallet service R-Pay Wallet.

Other companies which are running prepaid wallet services are Tech Mahindra and One97 Communications. Tech Mahindra is operating MoboMoney, while One97 owns the Paytm service. Paytm is a one of the leading services in India that enables one to pay prepaid mobile phone bills, DTH and data card recharge, post-paid bill payment, NH-8 toll-card recharge and bus ticket booking online. In an interview with Techcircle in May this year, Paytm CEO Harinder Takhar said that the platform had already seen 1 million downloads on its Android app since January this year.

A few months ago, leading mobile operator Idea Cellular had applied for a prepaid mobile wallet service and is awaiting the approval. E-commerce giant Flipkart has also applied for a licence for its PayZippy prepaid card service when it pivoted to a marketplace model, but is yet to obtain the same.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)