Paytm eyes biz loan foray, prepares fin services stack

Kolkata: Paytm, owned by One97 Communications, is planning to expand its business

loan

offerings to merchants across the country and for this, the fintech giant is likely to come up with a complete financial services stack within a year or so.

Talking to TOI on the sidelines of ‘All-in-One QR’ code launch here on Thursday, Saurabh Sharma, senior vice president of Paytm, said: “We are gauging the lending market and taking merchants’ feedback for now. The pan-India online lending business is on the cards, later this year. However, we are not rolling out this operation anytime soon. Everything is at the modelling stage now. We are carrying out an extensive back-end preparation before embarking on new operations.”

The company further plans to invest in merchant solutions for a deeper engagement beyond payments. With the help of Paytm for Business app, the traders can avail different financial services like insurance. “We will help and support the merchants to help them increase their business scale,” said Sharma.

Last year, Paytm had joined hands with Clix Capital to offer loans as a deferred payment option for consumers and to merchants as credit lines. At this pilot stage, the company is experimenting with many ideas to firm up on a ‘profit-making’ lending business model. Currently, Paytm Payments Bank is not allowed to lend as per the Reserve Bank of India's guidelines. The platform has 15 crore users, including 1.5 crore merchants.

The transaction rate of Paytm has increased over 30% in India since 2018, said Sharma. “We are trying to double our presence in the east — mostly in Kolkata, Kharagpur, and Ranchi.” It has witnessed a 150% growth in 12 months in the east.

The e-payment platform on Thursday announced that it will be on-boarding two million merchants over the next 12 months from the eastern region, including West Bengal, Assam, Jharkhand and Odisha, taking the total number to four million. The All-in-One QR has already enabled over two million merchants in eastern India to accept unlimited payments through Paytm Wallet, Rupay Cards and all UPI-based payment apps directly into their bank account at 0% fee.

Sharma added: “Bengal is a key market for us, but we are looking at reaching out to more towns here. We want to go deeper into the towns and districts where we already have presence. We are hunting for newer markets in the east.”

In order to check frauds and to aware both customer and the merchant of the transaction they have introduced Paytm sound box and it is not dependent on any network.


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