Jio Money, Ambani's solution to Modi's cashless economy

At a time when demonetisation has stymied to a great extent cash transaction in market and the Prime Minister keeps pitching for moving into a digital economy, Reliance Jio's new app is being made available from December five to pave way for a cashless future.

"Today, thanks to solutions like JioMoney, every Indian has the ability to have a Digital ATM in their pocket. One of the key drivers for adoption of Digital Money and the Cashless way of living is people's ability to convert physical Cash into Digital Cash and vice-versa," RIL Chairman Mukesh Ambani said.

He said  Jio Money targets merchants, especially small merchants, to build a "digital retail ecosystem" through cashless payments via bank accounts.

“This will be at mandis, restaurants, bus and railway tickets, and even person to person transfers. Starting 5th of December, every merchant can download this application.”

The app also lets merchants make supplier payments, transfer money between their bank accounts and use digital petty cash.

Over 10 million small merchant and retailers are expected to be signing up for the Merchant Solutions app across 17,000 towns and 4 lakh villages that Jio operates in.

"I would like to congratulate Prime Minister Narendra Modi's bold and historic decision to demonetize old currency.By doing this, our PM Modi has given the strongest push to growth of digitally-enabled, optimal-cash economy in India. Digitally-enabling transactions will boost economic growth, while bringing unprecedented transparency and accountability," Ambani said.

Ambani's mega announcement came three weeks after PM Modi announced demonetisation on November eight, banning 500 and 1,000-rupee notes, which constituted 86 per cent of the cash circulated in the market.

Asking the people to deposit all high-value notes to banks and putting restrictions on withdrawal of cash, Modi had said the process would continue till December 31.

Reliance had rolled out its free Jio voice call, data and video offer on September one, more than a month before Modi's announcement, making it available to the people till December 31.

On Thursday, Ambani extended the period of his sops till March 31, 2017 under a new "Happy New Year Plan."

Ambani said in the first three months, Jio has grown faster than facebook,WhatsApp, Skype.

"It has crossed 50 million users and Jio now fastest growing tech firm," he said.

"Today, Jio has successfully rolled out eKYC (know your customer) across 2 lakh outlets in India.
This is nearly equally to total number of ATMs in India. We are in the process of doubling this by March 2017."

"I want to reiterate that Jio is committed to ensuring that all domestic voice calls by Jio customers will be free forever," he said.

Ambani said to avail of Jio service, one doesn't have change the existing sim as "Jio fully supports mobile number portability and all customers can retain their existing number when they migrate to Jio."

He said Jio is not only delivering 4 times more data than all other Indian telecom operators combined but also much faster through puts than any other mobile network in India.

"Starting 4 December 2016, every new Jio user will get Jio's Data, Voice, Video and the full bouquet of Jio applications absolutely free, till 31 March 2017...We are calling this the "Jio Happy New Year Offer".