personal finance

Though small, sale of digital gold on the rise


As price of gold is moving northwards, digital gold players such as SafeGold and MMTC PAMP are betting on a good festive season even as an increasing number of Indian consumers take to digital platforms to buy gold.

“Digital gold is growing rapidly though it is still tiny compared to the physical gold transactions,” said Gaurav Mathur, managing director at SafeGold, a digital platform that allows customers to buy, sell and receive vaulted gold. The digital gold industry is probably less than two years old, but 6-7 million customers have already used digital platforms to buy gold, he said. “The overall turnover of digital gold in the past 12 months would be close to ?600 -700 crore. At SafeGold, we are expecting a significant increase in digital gold transactions in the current festive season,” Mathur told ET.

Digital gold offers complete flexibility in deciding the amount one wants to invest — starting from as little as Re 1 — for longterm wealth creation. Also, the buyer does not have to take pay fees for keeping gold safe in a locker. Price of gold on Tuesday was hovering around ?32,867 per 10 gm with GST.

SafeGold has partnered with platforms like PhonePe, PaisaBazaar, MobiKwik, Cube Wealth, NiYo, TMW, InstantPay, Udio (Transerv) and SpiceMoney to provide customers greater access to gold. It has also launched a pilot with online jewellery Carat-Lane to facilitate in-store as well as online redemption of gold through jewellery.

Private equity fund Invent Capital owns majority stake in Safe-Gold while World Gold Council holds a minority stake.

MMTC-PAMP, a precious metals joint venture between state-owned bullion trader MMTC and Swiss precious metals refiner PAMP, too, has tied up with Paytm, PhonePe and Motilal Oswal to sell digital gold.

The gold bought by its customers is stored in fully insured MMTC vaults.

“The ecosystem for digital gold is building up in the country now,” said Arjun Raychaudhuri, CEO at MMTC PAMP.

He said his company pioneered the concept about two years ago, adding that digital gold providers work at a low margin in a fairly competitive market.





READ SOURCE

Leave a Reply

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you accept our use of cookies.