Paytm starts buy-now pay-later service for train ticket booking via IRCTC

Company's lending business scaled to 4.1 million loan disbursals in the first two months of the March quarter.

Fintech company Paytm said on Thursday will be able to use its buy-now-pay-later service to buy train tickets from the IRCTC website.

“We strive to offer innovative tech-driven solutions to users to enable seamless digital payments and financial services. Paytm Postpaid (BNPL) will now be available for users who want to book train tickets through IRCTC. Through the partnership with IRCTC, Paytm PG hopes to offer seamless and secure digital payments to users for instant ticket bookings with the option to pay later,” said Praveen Sharma, chief executive officer of Paytm Payments Services Limited.

Paytm Postpaid offers interest free credit up to Rs 60,000 for a period for 30 days. Users are provided a single monthly bill to keep a track of all their credit-driven spending. Users can pay back the amount in full at the end of the billing cycle or convert their bill to EMI for convenient payments.

Paytm’s lending business scaled to 4.1 million loan disbursals during the first two months of the March quarter (y-o-y growth of 449 per cent), with approximately 2.2 million loans disbursed in February 2022. This aggregates to a total loan value of Rs 2,095 crore (y-o-y growth of 366 per cent).

The company’s stock has decline, keeping with technology companies’ performance pummeled the world over. Paytm has also faced the ire of analysts who have questioned its earnings from loan disbursals and thinly-spread out business model across cloud services, gaming and e-commerce, among other things.

Paytm shares were trading at Rs 542 on BSE at the time of publishing on Thursday, down 75 per cent from IPO (initial public offering) price of Rs 2,150. On March 23, the company’s shares hit a lifetime low of Rs 520.