What do you do when you want to offer cashless taxi rides to consumers but are prohibited by RBI's recurring rules to do so? You launch an in-app prepaid wallet. Online cab booking service Olacabs seems to have done the same with the new version of its mobile apps across Android and iOS. The company mentions that users can recharge their wallet through credit or debit card or through net banking and then use this to pay for taxi rides. One can recharge their account for anywhere between Rs 100 to Rs 5000. Following this, the fare amount is automatically deducted from the customer's wallet after ride completion and a receipt is emailed to them. Users can also apparently use this wallet to gift a ride or pre-pay a taxi ride for their friends or family. As an introductory offer and in a possible bid to encourage more users to use the wallet, Ola mentions that it will be offering 100% cash back to users on their first recharge until October 31, 2014. That being said, Ola says it will continue to accept cash transactions as well. Prepaid Wallet license? What's not clear is whether Olacabs has partnered with any prepaid wallet license holder to offer this wallet service. We're currently awaiting a response from Olacabs on this. Note that Olacabs primarily acts as a taxi aggregator and doesn't own these taxis. Hence, a closed wallet cannot be used for making these third party transactions. It would need a semi-closed prepaid wallet license or at least a tie-up with a company which has the…
