Snapdeal-owned FreeCharge has signed a partnership with south Indian supermarket chain Heritage Fresh to let the latter's customers pay for purchases using FreeCharge wallet across 125 stores across Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai. FreeCharge claims that it will be able to complete the transaction in 10 seconds through this integration. Commenting on the partnership, Govind Rajan, CEO said, "Customers want a hassle-free shopping experience and one of the pain points is waiting for SMS based OTP to complete their transaction." However, if the wallet is empty, then loading money will have to be done through a longer process through cards or net banking and use two factor authentication. In recent times, FreeCharge has been trying to automate payments. It launched a feature called Auto Pay for recurring payments. Customers can pay utility bills through the wallet as they can set reminders and the amount will be deducted. Users will have to set a due date for bill and will work for mobile recharges as well. Once the transaction is successful, a confirmation will be shared with the customer. In case there aren’t sufficient funds in the wallet, customers are reminded to add money. FreeCharge has also been trying to increase its presence in online payments. In August, it signed a deal with payment gateway provider PayUbiz, where it will allow customers of FreeCharge to access to its online merchants registered with PayUbiz. The alliance allowed the wallet as a payment option in PayUbiz’s merchant websites. A similar tie up was announced with payment gateway CCAvenue in March. Customers were provided access to…
