Paytm, India’s largest digital payments platform, will reportedly invest Rs. 5,000 crores in its payments business over the next three years. Backed by the Chinese investor and ecommerce firm Alibaba, Paytm has been raising additional funds to invest in the growing digital payments sector.
Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma, speaking in an interview said, “The biggest threat for (sic) us will be us, not anybody else.” According to Sharma, Paytm has invested more than Rs. 5,000 crores in its mobile payments sector so far. “As a company, we have invested the most and will continue to be the largest investor (in digital payments) in the country,” he added.
Sharma believes the entry of global companies would shine a light on the country’s digital payments market and will lead to better consumer understanding and fast standardization of the products. Paytm’s parent company One97 Communication also posted a record revenue of $ 126 million for the fiscal year 2016 – 2017. With a net worth of Rs. 2,376 crores, the company claims to have over 218 million active customers in India.
The demonetization of the Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 notes worked largely in favor of the digital wallet startups. Currently, more than 20 online payment startups operate in India and various global players have also entered the Indian market. Google launched it’s payments platform Tez last month, whereas, Apple is geared up to launch Apple Pay by the end of this year. In August this year, the global ecommerce giant Amazon also launched their payments service Amazon Pay in India that directly competes with Flipkart’s PhonePe and Paytm.
Paytm has also partnered with the government’s mobile payments interface and has integrated BHIM UPI on its platform. According to sources, the digital wallet startup will train its 5 million merchant partners to create BHIM UPI IDs and will provide users the ability to add multiple bank accounts with one Paytm BHIM UPI account. Recently, the company raised $1.4 billion in equity financing from Japan based Softbank. This round of investment was one of the largest funding rounds by a single investor and the biggest investment for SoftBank in the Indian startup ecosystem.