India’s largest digital payments service provider Paytm has hit a run rate of 5 billion transactions a year, with $50 billion of transactions value flowing through the platform annually. In a press release, One97 Communications, which runs the Paytm app said that it has been witnessing a tremendous increase in adoption of digital payments in the tier 2 & tier 3 cities which constitutes 50% of its total user base. “This has helped the company to achieve an annual run rate of 5 Billion transactions and $50 Billion in GTV (Gross Transaction Value),” said the release.
According to the company, 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 wave. The rise is attributable to Paytm’s multilingual app. “25% of the Paytm users prefer using the app in their regional language. Hindi is the most used language after English, followed by Gujarati, Telugu, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil and Kannada among others. Increase in usage of vernacular languages on the app reflects the trust in digital payments from consumers that hail from tier 2 and 3 towns,” Paytm said in the release.
Paytm’s rise from just a startup to be the largest contributor towards all forms of digital payments including UPI, wallet and cards in indeed noteworthy. Since January 2018, the platform has processed over 400 million BHIM UPI transactions, which is fast becoming a preferred alternative to net banking. The company has also achieved 500% growth in P2P transactions last quarter, said the release.
Notably, Paytm also powers largest offline payments network with over 8 million offline merchant partners who accept Paytm QR for payments. The company has 3x larger merchant base compared to any card payments network in the country, noted the release.
Another interesting trend has been the increasing usage by women. “Over the past year, female users on the Paytm platform have grown more than 100%. While millennials continue to be the most active users of digital payment, the platform has been witnessing increase of the users above the age of 35 years as well,” Paytm press release said.
