Paytm To Offer Foreign Exchange Services And Remittance Soon

India’s largest digital payments platform, Paytm, is set to foray into foreign exchange and cross border payments under its payments bank entity. Paytm is on the road to dominate the Indian digital payments space with its recent entry into wealth management and insurance services as well as entering into cross border commerce among other services. According to reports, Paytm already received the authorized dealership license from the Reserve Bank Of India to offer services of foreign exchange to foreigners traveling in India as well as Indians looking for foreign exchange before embarking on a trip abroad.

The Economic Times reported the newly formed bank is all set to start offering foreign exchange services and going forward, could also enter into cross border remittance services for its customers, as per sources. A Paytm top executive further added, “Having started with payments, Paytm is slowly diversifying into other financial services and foreign exchange conversion will be a starting point and eventually it could also try to venture into cross border payments both outward and inward.”

Along with Paytm, Airtel Payments Bank and Jio Payments Bank have also received the license for cross border payments from the Central Bank of India. Fino Payments Bank is the latest bank to join the list of companies taking a step closer towards becoming full service financial entities.

According to fintech company InstaReM the cross border remittance market in India is worth around $ 6 billion to $ 7 billion annually. InstaReM and PayPal are two of the biggest competitors to Paytm in this space. Paytm is also a majority player in the Indian digital payments space which is said to be worth $ 500 billion. The financial services company is backed by the world’s leading conglomerates Alibaba and SoftBank as well.

Launched in 2010, Paytm quickly grew in ranks by offering online services like mobile recharges, utility bill payments, travel, movies and events bookings as well as in store payments with the Paytm QR Code. As of February 2017, the company claims to have 800 million active users, over 13,000 employees and has 3 million offline merchants across India.