Mypoolin, a social payments application, is looking to double the number of registered users to a lakh by the end of this year as it is betting on a surge in peer-to-peer payments with unified payments interface (UPI) becoming operational.
“The dynamics of mobile payments are evolving every single day. UPI is set to be the game changer in peer-to-peer money transfer. UPI brings in interoperability, making it easier for users to transfer money from any bank to any bank instantly. And it is free of cost,” Ankit Singh, Co-Founder, Mypoolin said.
Mypoolin, which is a year-and-a-half old start-up, earlier used mobile wallets to help friends to split bills and make payments. It has over 50,000 users currently.
“However, for high frequency micro payments such as dinning and movies, we saw that users do not use wallets. There were certain challenges such as transaction limit for wallets without KYC was Rs 10,000 a month. Then, transferring money into the wallet every time is a hassle. Plus, there is a charge of four per cent when you want to put money from your wallet into the bank. Additionally, wallets are not interoperable,” Mr Singh explained.
Mypoolin has also enabled UPI payments combined with their Facebook Messenger chatbot.
“We have gone a step ahead in using UPI through Facebook Messenger, becoming the first ones in Asia to allow interoperable bank to bank transfers with Messenger chatbot. Mypoolin users can transfer money to any other user using our chatbot just with that user’s phone number,” Mr Singh said.
Users can chat with the interactive Bot, share all information related to making a payment such as payee details, amount, payment remarks, or ask it for assistance n making payments.
Mr Singh said a lot of users are using the app to pool in money to pay for rent, internet bill, electricity bill, and travelling expense.
Mypoolin won QPrize 2015 to get USD 250,000 convertible note from Accel Partners and Qualcomm Ventures. It had earlier raised a seed round from Rajan Anandan (Google India and SE Asia Head), Sharad Sharma (Co-founder, iSPIRT) and Amit Ranjan (Co-founder, Slideshare), among others.
Asked about competition from the likes of Paytm and Freehcarge, Mr Singh said, “While other players don’t look at peer to peer payments as it doesn’t affect their topline, we look at peer to peer as a high frequency hook. We are trying to create a social payment network in the country which we have seen in the US and in China. In the coming years, people are either going to pay a stranger/ merchant or a friend. While merchant space is totally cluttered, we are focussed on friends space.”
