New Delhi: One97 Communications Limited, which owns Paytm – India’s largest digital payments company – announced that it has been witnessing a tremendous increase in adoption of digital payments in tier 2 & tier 3 cities which constitute 50 per cent 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). The company has been a catalyst in changing consumer’s behaviour to embrace digital payments that are now gathering increased traction across the country.
Tier 2 & 3 Cities Contributing in Growth
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.
Another factor that has contributed to the growth has been Paytm’s multilingual app. 25 per cent 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.
Largest Contributor towards Digital Payments
Paytm is the largest contributor towards all forms of digital payments including UPI, Wallet and Cards. 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 per cent growth in P2P transactions last quarter.
The platform has been able to create a network effect among its consumers and merchants. Given the multiple use cases, consumers prefer paying through Paytm, while the merchants accepting Paytm are seeing increased business and are also being able to pay digitally across their supply chain.
Paytm 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.
Usage among Women and Millennials Increased
The government’s push towards the adoption of digital payments has further helped in its acceptance among the masses. An encouraging trend that has been seen is increased usage among women. Over the past year, female users on the Paytm platform have grown more than 100 per cent.
While millennials continue to be the most active users of digital payment, the platform has been witnessing an increase in the users above the age of 35 years as well.
Kiran Vasireddy, COO – Paytm said, “We are witnessing phenomenal adoption in tier 2 & tier 3 cities, which is bringing in the new wave of growth for us. We have been the largest contributor towards all form of digital payments, including UPI. In the offline domain, our team is committed to onboard and educate merchants to offer the convenience of digital payments for their customers. Our merchant-base is 3x bigger compared to the card payments network. We will continue to invest further till we digitize payments for the majority of the small and large retailers in our country.”
