Smaller towns made 50% of user base and leads to a run rate of 5 Bn transactions : Paytm

Digital payments company Paytm claims to have breached the $4 billion in monthly gross transaction value. The number of transactions also peaked to 1.3 billion in quarter ending June, the company said on Monday.
Kiran Vasireddy, COO, Paytm said, “We are witnessing phenomenal adoption in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, which is bringing in the new wave of growth for us.”The smaller towns now constitute 50% of its user base. 

The company had a GTV of $1 billion in June 2017. It, however, did not disclose the numbers for April and May 2018. While GTV is not a true indicator of a company’s health, it does reflect the high adoption of Paytm as a payments platform in the country.

According to Paytm, cities such as Surat, Durgapur, Rajkot, Meerut, Imphal, Rohtak, Panipat, Mangalore, Ranchi, Puducherry, Rajamundri, Warangal, Jodhpur, Thrissur, Karnal, Madurai and Jamnagar are among the fastest adopters and are leading the digital wave.
Another factor that has contributed to the growth has been Paytm’s multilingual app. 25% of the Paytm users prefer using the app in their regional language.

Gross transaction value for Paytm includes everything from recharges, bill payments to peer-to-peer transactions via UPI (unified Payments Interface), peer-to-peer wallet transactions, and all purchases made via the Paytm Mall platform or the Paytm payment gateway. It does not include NEFT, or debit and credit card transactions, the company clarified.

While India is showing consistent growth in terms of adoption of digital payments, China has been the best example of rapid growth especially driven by QR code-based payments mainly dominated by two payment entities Alipay and We-Chat. Total value of funds paid through these platforms stand at more than $10 trillion annually.