Paytm creates WhatsApp moment for online payments in India

Besides making its app available in 10 new Indian languages, Paytm has successfully created a WhatsApp moment for the payment industry, as it touches a record five million transactions a day. 

Within hours of the Prime Minister’s announcement to demonetise Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, the number of new users signing up with Paytm has doubled, with the most number of transactions happening across the unorganised sector.

Paytm Founder-CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma said, “This is the biggest, boldest and the most ambitious anti-corruption measure by the Indian government. This move will see a wave of financial inclusion and has kicked off a golden age for FinTech companies across India.” The company in its official announcement said that it has touched a record five million transactions a day, and is on the way to process over Rs 24,000 crore, more than any other payment network in the country.

Paytm has registered a 700% increase in overall traffic and 1,000% growth in the amount of money added to the Paytm account over the last couple of days. During this period, the number of app downloads went up 300%. The number of transactions per user also went up from three transactions to over 18 transactions in a week.

Commenting on the development, Paytm spokesperson Sonia Dhawan said, “As Paytm becomes synonymous with payments across India, our truest opportunity is to be available at every nook and corner of the country. The time has come for our fellow Indians to educate each other about the benefits of cashless transactions and help India leapfrog from cash to quick and easy digital payments.”

She further added, “Paytm is definitely seeing network effect at play. More use cases and more merchants accepting Paytm, has increased its 150 million strong user base. Just as WhatsApp replaced SMS, cash and digital payments have now been replaced with Paytm.”

Within a year of launching its Online-to-Offline (O2O) payment solution, Paytm has emerged as the fastest growing QR Code-based POS network in the country. Over 8,50,000 offline merchants across India accept Paytm as their preferred payment mode. The company is targeting five million merchants by end of the fiscal year.

Besides its user interface on Android that is available in English, the company has also expanded its reach across the country by launching in 10 different regional languages -— Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya and Punjabi. According to sources, Paytm, owned by One97 Communications, will have more customers than SBI.