Paytm Inbox, which will be made available on Android platform early Friday morning in India, lets users exchange texts, images and videos with their friends over an end-to-end encrypted protocol, the company said. The Noida, India-headquartered firm has taken several cues from other messaging services: it supports the ability to share real-time location with friends, and also lets users recall their messages — two features that WhatsApp recently introduced on its service, though both have been available on other messaging platforms for sometime. Paytm is also bringing in-app games to its app, it said, a feature Tencent-backed Hike Messenger has offered for some time.
The rationale behind the unsual move of adding messaging feature to the wallet app, which is used by over 200 million users in the country, was the realization that there is a need of “social messaging, commerce and payments [to] seamlessly blend into one another,” Deepak Abbot, vice president of Paytm, said in a press statement.
Several messaging apps, including Tencent-owned WeChat, and Hike Messenger, have added support for payment option over the years on their respective apps. Paytm competes with MobiKwik and Ola Money mobile wallet apps in India.
