India’s leader in Digital Wallet and Payment platform, Paytm, has now launched a product focusing on its merchants and customers. It is said that this device was also brought to life to tackle the competition it is getting from global players like Google Pay, Amazon Pay, and even Walmart Inc. owned PhonePe.
Apart from this latest addition, Paytm had already come up with products like:
- Sound Box which gives voice confirmation of transactions made
- A stand of display QR code which also has USB Charger and Calculator
- A PoS (Point of Sale) device which not only accepts payment via scanning the code off of your phone but also accepts Debit and Credit cards offered by Paytm as well as others.
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The new product that has been launched in an event in Bangalore (Bengaluru) is signaling a shift in the company’s strategic focus from person- to- person transaction to its merchants. Ever since the Central Government banned the old currency through “Demonetization” in 2016 to wage war against corruption and black money, Paytm took advantage of the scarcity of physical money and has become synonymous with the word Digital Payments.
However, now the global players backed by global giants like Alphabet Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. are expanding their share in India by pumping in money from their huge war chests.
During the product launch, Founder of One97 Communication Limited, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, said, “Paytm is already bigger than all other players combined in merchant mobile payments”. He added, “We account for about 5 billion of the total 9 billion merchant payments in India”. One97 Communication Limited is the parent company of Paytm.
In November 2019, Paytm, yet again, raised $1 billion to compete against the tech giants who have huge war chests. This fund raising was done from various investors including SoftBank’s Vision Fund. In this round of fundraising Paytm was valued at $ 16 billion, making it India’s one of the most valued start-ups.
During the unveiling of Paytm’s product, Nandan Nilekani, Chairman, Infosys Limited, said, “Ultimately, startups have to make money and as recent attempts to go public in the U.S. show, investors want to see a clear path to profitability”. He added, “Only then can startups take charge of their own destiny”.
Swiss multinational investment banking and financial services firm, Credit Suisse says that India’s payments market can touch $ 1 trillion mark by the year 2023 as the majority of the young population is now adopting smartphones’ applications and online services for making payments.
During an interview with a leading magazine in 2019, Sharma has said that India will not become China where there are 2 players driving the market, instead India will have around 4 to 5 chief players. He adds that in India, the use of digital payments is growing at a faster rate in smaller cities than in the 10 biggest ones. Paytm is now being used by over 1.6 crore merchants in total – both offline and online – as companies like Uber, Swiggy, Oyo, all have added Paytm in their payment methods. Paytm can be seen used by people who are buying flight tickets and even a pencil at their local stationery store.
