 "Paytm hits record 5 mn transactions a day")
Buoyed by a sudden surge in demand for digital transaction, India’s largest mobile payments platform Paytm said it has touched a figure of five million payment transactions per day.
Following the ban on Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, mobile wallets, debit and credit cards, online money transfers have seen a rise of 200%, industry experts have observed. According to senior executives at Paytm, the Vijay Shekhar Sharma-led company would be able to close the financial year with Rs 24,000 crore worth of transactions processed on the platform.
“Within a year of launching its online-to-offline (O2O) payment solution, Paytm has emerged as the fastest growing quick response (QR) code-based point of sale (POS) network in the country. Backed by a large payment ecosystem of customers and merchants, the company registered a 700% increase in overall traffic and 1,000% growth in the amount of money added to the Paytm account over the past couple of days,” said the company.
During this period, the transaction value continued to be 200% of the average ticket size, while the number of app downloads went up 300%. The number of transactions per user also went up from three to 18 transactions in a week. The company said the number of repeat users have increased as well.
“Owing to the overwhelming response from consumers and merchants alike, we have set bolder targets in merchant acquisition, and are aiming to target five million merchants by the end of the financial year,” said KiranVasireddy, senior vice-president at Paytm. Sharma had earlier said the company would be increasing its offline footprint in the coming years. It is also looking to hire about 10,000 Paytm agents as it seeks to aggressively expand its offline merchant network to two-million-plus touch points by the end of the current financial year.
At present, about 850,000 offline merchants across India accept Paytm transactions. After the Prime Minister’s demonetisation announcement, the company introduced the ‘nearby’ feature on its platform. This enables customers to get information about their nearest Paytm merchant.
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In the first phase, this list would have information of 200,000 touch points, and would continue to grow every day.
“With Paytm, all merchants – be it small or large – can now accept payments at zero transaction fee or TDR (transaction discount rate). We also we urge banks to reduce the charges for adding money to wallets and facilitate this shift in consumer behaviour. This will ensure that every Indian merchant, big or small, can accept mobile payments,” said Nitin Misra, senior vice-president at Paytm.
Paytm has partnerships with thousands of retail outlets across various categories. Some of its major offline partners include the Future Group, More, Spencers, eZone, Croma, Fortis Health World, Indian Oil, Hindustan Petroleum and Mother Dairy.