 "Paytm reaches for the cashless crown")
Eyeing a 200 per cent growth, month on month, mobile wallet company Paytm said on Thursday the gross merchandise value (GMV) of its utility bill payments vertical would reach Rs 13,000 crore by the end of this year.
The utility vertical includes payment of electricity, water telephone and gas bills. According to Paytm officials, the total GMV of the whole segment in India is roughly Rs 75,000 crore.
"We are looking at a GMV of Rs 12,000-13,000 crore. Though we launched utilities and bill payments only a few months earlier, we are seeing a massive growth in the segment, of around 200 per cent month on month," said Kiran Vasireddy, senior vice-president.
Utilities, he said, would be one of the top performing verticals by year-end. "The payments eco-system we provide is a stop destination for everything from mobile recharges, buying movie ticket, groceries, to all sorts of utility bill payments. This is a bigger and wider business segment for us and we see major expansion happening," he added.
The company has tie-ups with around 25 power distribution companies and by the end of the next quarter, would add around 25 more. Plus, many state water distribution and piped gas boards.
"At present in our utilities vertical, we have 32 agencies which have on-boarded Paytm for bill payments and this would rise to 50 by the next quarter," said Vasireddy.
The company through such tie-ups hopes to reach Tier-II and Tier-III towns, and add a new set of customers who have still not started using mobile wallets to make payments. "This is another way of reaching out to prospective users in smaller towns. The moment they realise the ease of making payments of bills via mobile wallets and not stand in queues, more people would adopt Paytm wallets. We would be able to then introduce them to a whole new digital payments eco-system," said Vasireddy.
The company also plans to add features to its utilities vertical, such as bill payment reminders.
Last month, the company did around 3.5 million transactions in this segment and hopes to take it to seven mn by the end of this year. Recently, it said it planned to provide a cashless alternative to payments of all kinds across schools, colleges, universities and at premier institutions such as the Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Management.
Aiming for a convergence between its wallet service and a payments bank, the Vijay Shekhar Sharma-led company, backed by China's e-commerce major, Alibaba, is looking to expand its customer base from the present 120 mn to 500 mn by 2020.
