Reliance Jio is Coming up with Jio-Money Merchant Solutions For Small Vendors & Businesses
While Paytm is trying very hard to get merchants of all sizes and turnovers on its platform, Reliance Jio is trying to promote PM Modi’s vision of a cashless economy through its own Jio-Money app. It is a digital wallet like other e-wallets, and is specific to Jio users right now.
However, to tackle the hurdles faced by the smaller merchants, Jio is launching Jio-Money Merchant solutions to provide an ecosystem for digital transactions. The platform is also aimed to promote small vendors who are not able to catch up with this cashless technology.
“To enable digital transactions, merchants, especially small merchants, are an important component of our economy. To fuel their transactions, Jio is working to empower Indian merchants by building a digital retail ecosystem, which we are calling Jio-Money Merchant Solutions,” Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and MD of Reliance Industries Limited said.
The new app will be available starting 5th December to every merchant. Ambani said this will enable digital transactions of all types, whether they be at mandis, small shops, restaurants, railway ticket counters, for bus and mass transit and even for person-to-person money transfers.
Customers can use their Jio-Money wallets to pay merchants from their bank accounts directly, and merchants can use the Jio-Money Merchant App to accept these payments directly into their bank accounts. This is pretty much what Paytm does too.
The merchant will also be able to transfer money between accounts and make supplier payments through it. Reliance Jio’s major target will be smaller towns and villages where use of digital money is uncommon and the merchants still rely on cash payments.
How is it different from other Digital Wallets?
Through this Jio-Money merchants app, even small vendors on the street side will be able to accept payments to their bank accounts. The Jio Money accounts are linked directly to the bank accounts, so the money also gets deposited to these bank accounts.
Through this, customers can also pay directly from their bank accounts, sending money directly into the merchant’s bank account. All of this is possible because Reliance Jio has a payments bank license in a joint venture with SBI.
The company is targeting 10 million merchants on its platform, without a fixed timeline. The company already has KYC details through Aadhar card verification at the time of sim card distribution. It has the ability to create a ripple in the cash-driven economy is it is able to provide a reliable service.
