Messaging app Hike today said it has tied up with Airtel Payments Bank to power its mobile wallet product.
Users of the SoftBank-backed app will have access to the bank's vast product line, including merchant and utility payments, it said in a statement.
Hike, which has over 100 million registered users, saw over 30 percent month-on-month growth for its wallet service.
Through this partnership, Airtel Payments Bank gets access to over 100M (million) users on Hike and will begin powering the Hike Wallet product.Hike Statement
The company has seen tremendous traction on the wallet over the last few months, most of it being organic, Hike Messenger Vice-Preseident (Product) Pathik Shah said. It is on track for over 5 million transactions this month with services like Recharge and peer-to-peer transactions, he added. “As we scale up the number of services on our platform in the coming months, we expect this to grow even faster,” he said.
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In light of the new KYC (know-your-customer) guidelines of Reserve Bank of India for mobile wallets, the partnership will ensure that users have an uninterrupted service when the new guidelines kick in, Shah said.
“The addition of Hike Wallets to our portfolio will position us as one of the largest digital payments platforms in India,” said A Ganesh, Chief Operating Officer, Airtel Payments Bank.
Hike was launched in December 2012. In August 2016, in its fourth round of funding, Hike raised of $175 million.
The round was led by Tencent and Foxconn at a valuation of $1.4 billion, having reached the milestone in just under years.
Investors in Hike also include Tiger Global and Bharti.
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