Over 50% of Indians are recharge their phones online

The market share of mobile recharge has increased in India crossed 50% for the first time in 2020 as the pandemic led people to minimise stepping out to stores and instead opt for online transactions.

Feedback from the top Fintech companies including Google Pay and PhonePe, payment gateway CC said there was a 55-75% surge in mobile recharge transactions.

At Reliance Jio, the share of online recharges increased to 50% in the December quarter from 35% in the March quarter, after having touched 60% during the lockdown in the June-ended quarter, according to a senior company executive.

At Bharti Airtel, half of its recharge revenue for all of 2020 came from the digital channel for the first time, a company official said and at Vodafone Idea , they have also witnessed on the spike of digital payment medium been adopted by many consumers.

We saw a big spike in the recharge category since the country went into lockdown and the spike has continued post-lockdown as well, indicating a permanent change in habits with a lot of people now continuing to recharge online.

According to Google Pay, the pandemic pushed many first-time users to consider digital payments for frequent transactions such as mobile recharges and bill payments.

As per PhonePe said these steps helped to push transaction volumes and increase the average recharge size. Our average transaction value for recharges went up by 20% year on year. This is largely due to the increased share of unlimited plans seen during the lockdown,” PhonePe said.