To stay ahead of its rival Whatsapp, homegrown instant messaging app Hike has now partnered with Airtel Payment Bank to power its wallet and expand its reach.
As part of the alliance, Airtel Payments Bank will get access to over 100 million users on Hike and will begin powering the Hike Wallet product.
Hike users will have access to Airtel Payments Bank’s product line, which includes merchant and utility payments, Know Your Customer (KYC) infrastructure.
Pathik Shah, vice president, product at Hike Messenger said: “We’ve seen tremendous traction on the Wallet over the last few months, most of it being organic. As we scale up the number of services on our platform in the coming months, we expect this to grow even faster. In light of the new KYC guidelines, we’re also excited to announced a new partnership with Airtel Payments Bank."
"This is a great move for our users and it will ensure that they have an uninterrupted service when the new guidelines kick in. We’re excited and we look forward to working with Airtel on supporting this effort to bring more Indians online and enable easy transactional services for them.”
A Ganesh, chief operating officer, Airtel Payments Bank said: “We are delighted to partner with Hike to build a world-class digital payments ecosystem by leveraging our vast reach and digital banking infrastructure. The addition of Hike Wallets to our portfolio will position us as one of the largest digital payments platforms in India.”