Indian e-commerce company, Infibeam, has launched a semi-closed wallet service that allows users to make a purchase on the site without having to use a credit card or net banking.

Infibeam’s Wallet allows users to top up their accounts with any desirable amount up to Rs 5,000 by using any of the regular payment modes including credit cards, debit cards, and net-banking. It should be noted that since it’s a pre-paid wallet, users can only deposit money in the account and use it on the site, but cannot withdraw the amount.

As part of a promotional offer, Infibeam is also offering 10% of the purchase amount up to Rs 2,000 as a cash back to the customer’s wallet till November 15, 2012. Customers are required to use the promo-code “MANGOPEOPLE” at the time of check-out to avail the wallet offer. There’s another caveat to the offer: it cannot be used with Infibeam’s magic box, hot deals, gold & silver coins and gift vouchers, and is not applicable on market place products.

Founded in 2007, Infibeam is an eCommerce platform that offers products such as books, media, lifestyle, gifts, electronics and automobiles. The company is headquartered in Ahmadabad and has 600 employees based out of offices in Bangalore, Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai.

As failed transactions are a major cause for concern for Indian e-commerce merchants, many websites are building a pre-paid wallet service so that users can pre-fill their wallets and do not have go through the hassle of payment gateways. Last year, ecommerce major, Flipkart had also added a ‘Wallet‘ feature to enable customers store money in their Flipkart account and redeem it with future purchases. However, we feel that it makes more sense for low value transactions, specially digital goods, for which entering payment details becomes cumbersome.

Mobile and DTH recharge site, Paytm* had also introduced Paytm cash which allows you to store money in a wallet for future transactions on its portal. Paytm also automatically refills customer’s wallet in case of a failed transaction.  At the #NAMA Conference, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Founder & Managing Director, One97 Communications said that more than 60% of Paytm’s wallet customers were due to failed transactions and only more than 3,000 people voluntarily deposit money into their wallet on a daily basis. Clearly, a pre-paid wallet seems like an interesting solution for E-Commerce websites until they find payment gateways to be more reliable.

*Disclosure: One97 is an advertiser with MediaNama