Mobile payments and commerce platform Paytm plans to double its offline merchant and ‘kirana’ store network to reach four million merchants this year, as it looks to create more use cases for its wallet and payment bank business.
“This year, we will be present offline in every nook and corner,” said Vijay Shekhar Sharma, CEO at Paytm. “Our offline payments will become as big as our online payments.”
Paytm’s offline merchant netwok includes small ‘paan’ shops, vegetable vendors and big retail outlets such as Aditya Birla Group’s food and grocery retail arm More, Indian Oil petrol pumps, food chains such as Cafe Coffee Day and Pizza Hut, and several schools and colleges.
Paytm gives these merchants a sticker with a personalised code, which can be put near the cash counter. Customers with Paytm accounts can then scan the code from their mobile. The system asks how much to pay the merchant and the amount is immediately transferred to the merchant, said Amit Sinha, Vice-President (business and people) at Paytm.
Currently, the Noida-based startup does 3.5 million offline transactions in a month worth $8.5 million, excluding mobile recharges. It estimates transactions in the offline business alone to grow 10 times to 35 million by the year end.
Sinha said some of these offline merchants are being trained to also become cash collection agents for its payments bank to acquire customers and recharge Paytm wallets. “As Paytm continues growth in tier 2-3 town, we want to enable our unbanked and underbank customers to enable them to add money to their Paytm wallets through physical add cash points, bank network and ATM,” said Sinha.
The company plans to have 3.5 lakh add points by the end of this year from 67,000 at present.
“Payments and wallets help acquire consumers, marketplace, online to offline and offline business helps acquire merchants and our payments bank will provide financial services for both consumers and merchants,” said Sharma, commenting on the holistic business model of Paytm.
Source: The Economic Times
