One of the early entrants in the digital payments space was ItzCash, set up in 2006 as a subsidiary of the Essel Group by Ashok Goel of Zee and former Dish TV executive Naveen Surya. ItzCash was launched as a prepaid cash card and a semi-closed wallet service — customers could use it to make payments through a mobile app, on the internet or through IVRS. “Many tech-based companies such as Rediff and Indiatimes were facing issues with customer payments because the latter didn’t have credit or debit cards. We, meanwhile, were launching a technology product [Dish TV set-top boxes]. So, we thought that if customers could walk into retail outlets and top up a prepaid account in the form of a wallet or prepaid cash card, it would solve the problem of making payments without plastic currency,” says Surya, managing director of ItzCash.