MUMBAI (Reuters) - Reliance Industries said its telecoms unit Jio will extend its free data service to all new and existing customers till March 2017, in a bid to attract more customers to its 4G telecom service amid stiff competition from incumbents.

Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambani, India's richest man, said in a live feed on YouTube on Thursday that all its new customers from Dec. 4 onwards will get free voice and data till March 31, 2017. The free offer was earlier valid till Dec. 31.

He said Jio has already crossed 50 million customers in the three months since launch on Sept. 1.

The company also announced a rollout of Jio Money Merchant Solutions, a mobile payments application, for enabling digital payments for small merchants at their various point of transactions.

(Reporting by Promit Mukherjee; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)