FreeCharge to Roll Out 'Chat and Pay' Feature On Thursday

Mobile wallet and digital payments player FreeCharge announced Wednesday the launch of its 'Çhat and Pay' feature, which the company said enables social payments between users and merchants.

The chat-based payments interface will let merchants accept payments using the FreeCharge app in under a minute of registration,merchants will also be able to upgrade their payment limit of Rs. 1,00,000 with necessary KYC verification, the company said.

FreeCharge is looking to bring on board neighbourhood small shopkeepers, Taxi services and merchants from the unorganised sector using the service, which brings a buyer - seller chat interface for merchants. To accept payments, merchants must register their bank account number, geolocation and choose a custom identifier, called a paytag to allow customers to identify their service area through their FreeCharge app.

Merchants can start accepting digital payments in less than a minute after registering on the FreeCharge app, and the chat-based payment feature has a five second transaction time, the company said.

"Payments are often social; they are in fact a very human interaction. Chat N Pay brings this human emotion to payments, making them deeply engaging," said Govind Rajan, Chief Operating Officer, FreeCharge in an emailed statement. "Now merchants can start accepting digital payments by just downloading our app. Importantly at zero investment," he added.

Earlier this year in January, FreeCharge had partnered with McDonalds to enable customers to pay using its wallet using the on-the-Go Pin authentication method, and had also tied up with fashion retailer Shoppers Stop in November 2015.

The 'Chat and Pay' service will be rolled out by Thursday on Android, and then on iOS and Windows over the next few weeks.