Leading mobile wallet MobiKwik today said it has tied up with books and stationary retailer WHSmith India to enable shopping offline at all its retail stores. MobiKwik, which has 17 million users, offers shopping for stationary, magazines, entertainment and snacks at over 55 WHSmith India outlets across Mumbai and Delhi, a statement said here.

WHSmith India operates in high footfall locations such as metro stations, in Delhi. MobiKwik targets to create 'India’s largest independent payments network' with 100 million digitally paying users and two lakh retailers by the end of 2015, it added. Out of these two lakh retailers, close to one lakh are expected to be physical offline stores.

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Currently, MobiKwik enables payment across 50,000 retailers, it said. "WHSmith India stores will also serve as ‘MobiKwik Nodes’, where users can load money on their MobiKwik wallet," the statement said. The company said WHSmith is 'the first of a series of exclusive tie-ups that MobiKwik aims to do this year.'

"Mobile payment has considerable potential to disrupt Indian retail and we aim to create many more such partnerships for mobile wallets to replace cash and cards," Bipin Preet Singh, founder and chief executive MobiKwik said.

The company also has tie-ups with Café Coffee Day to use mobile wallets for payments, and ICICI Bank to allow customers to deposit money to their wallets using cash. MobiKwik had applied for a payment bank license in February 2015.

Source: PTI