Hike becomes India's first messenger to launch digital wallet

Homegrown messaging platform, Hike has rolled out an in-app electronic payments wallet allowing its 100 million users to transfer money as well as pay mobile phone bills, in an effort to cash in on the growing digital transactions in India.

Hike is the first messaging platform in the country to have an integrated wallet. Hike's investor, Tencent, has similar offerings in China through WeChat messaging app.

Hike said its wallet will allow instant money transfer among its clients and enable fund transfer to banks using the government-backed United Payments Interface (UPI) system.

This move from Hike comes ahead of a possible launch of a payment facility by Facebook-owned WhatsApp later this year.

Kavin Mittal, CEO, Hike, said, "The startup has been looking at Tencent's WeChat services in China and finding ways to adapt them to India's digital payments market."

He added, "For sure we talk to Tencent quite often, we are inspired by them and it's great to have them as a partner. Hike has partnered Indian private sector lender Yes Bank to facilitate money transfers to banks using the UPI system."

Besides mobile phone bill payments and traditional wallet-to-wallet transfers, Hike will also allow its users to send "blue packets" or envelopes containing digital money to friends, a feature borrowed from WeChat's "red packets".