Chinese smartphones become popular in India but consumers are not interested in their payment services

Xiaomi is one of the top smartphone manufacturers in the world. It has greatly increased the digital markets including India. The company is mainly known for its affordable smartphones and its own custom skin, MIUI.

Read More: Xiaomi developing a striking smartphone with sliding display, camera, and receiver

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Nevertheless, there is a huge gap between Xiaomi and other competing services of Indian local digital payment platform PhonePe and Google’s digital payment platform Google Pay.

The Chinese smartphone brands such as Xiaomi, Oppo, and Realme released their online payment platforms Mi Pay, Mi Credit, Oppo Kash, and Realme PaySa in India respectively in 2020.

However, the download volume of these applications in the Google PlayStore does not exceed 100 million. Smartphone users of these brands are between 20 million and 100 million in India.

Based on the volume of transactions processed by online financial services platforms, these applications are far from competitors. In addition, NPCI data shows that during 2020, the monthly transaction volume of Mi Pay and Realme PaySa will be 480,000 and 10,000 respectively, with a small monthly growth rate.

In December 2020, PhonePe’s transaction volume reached 902.3 million, while Google’s payment application Google Pay processed 854.96 million transactions.

Furthermore, the digital payment services reviewer stated that despite stimulating the use of digital applications by consumers during the COVID-19 epidemic, the growth rate did not increase.

Apart from this, these Chinese technology companies also provide other digital financial services in India, such as fast loans, insurance, and mutual fund investments, but still not increasing in development.

Both companies are trying to diversify their operations in the financial services sector and use these services and potential advertising revenue to benefit from their existing user base.

The research director at IDC India said, “However, after launching these application services, we have not seen them carry out marketing activities.”

The founder of the research company TechARC said that loan activity using third-party apps would decline in 2020, due to a drop in expected credit scores after the COVID-19 epidemic.